A Coyne Tossed in the ...

 

I was a little startled to see Andrew Coyne absent without explanation from CBC’s latest “At Issue” segment. I had been keen in seeing his take on the last week’s truckers’ protest, given his uncharacteristic emotional outburst the previous week. I was shocked at the time—I had always respected Coyne for his failure to play rhetorical tricks, to appeal to emotions or to prejudice, always cooly and fairly analyzing the issue at hand. The Coyne I saw last week seemed someone else: grim, angry, and full of insults.

But then, almost immediately, I thought I should have expected it.

Note that the tone of the panel in general has shifted: from mocking the truckers to complaining about Trudeau and the government. They realize which way the wind is blowing. In the past, it has been notable that members of the panel never radically disagree. They seem to decide among themselves beforehand what the line will be, and during the taped segment always basically reinforce one another.

It was the same this time, and the fact that what they were saying was close to the opposite of what they were saying last week did not seem to bother the panelists. But Coyne had always been an honest guy, a man of principle. It may have been too much for him.

Especially since I suspect Coyne knowingly sold his soul to the devil last time, going along with the agreed-upon line although knowing it was wrong, although it tore at his soul. He now cannot face the cameras as he finds himself having sold out just to immediately find himself visibly on the wrong side. It would be like standing there naked, with visible boils and cankers.

He may be having an emotional crisis. Indeed, in retrospect, there are signs he was having an emotional crisis last week.

Looking again now at the last panel, Coyne’s facial expressions are disturbing. He usually smiles every now and then. Last week, he looked resolutely grim. He was oddly blinking constantly. Experts say that rapid blinking indicates someone is lying. Coyne was saying things that he knew were not true. His failure to smile showed he was not happy about what he was saying. His tone of anger was probably chanelling his own anger and inner turmoil about selling out. He also seemed to have developed a nervous tic, his head every now and then suddenly jerking in an unnatural way. Watch and decide.

I find this sad. Coyne was a good guy. He sold out, got woke, and got broke.

This is a time that tries men’s souls. Many will fail the test. Many will fall by the wayside.

This week:

Last week:

You decide...

The Case for a Continuing People's Party of Canada

Andrew Coyne, who may be the brightest person in Canada, argues counter to the common fear of a second right-wing party splitting the vote, keeping the Liberals permanently in power.

There are, after all, Coyne points out, four parties on the left—and yet the Liberals are the one party most often in power. How does that work?

How is it, for that matter, that the Canadian public seems generally to the left of our next-door neighbour, the US, in politics generally?

Isn’t it precisely because we have smaller parties on the left?

These force the left’s issues onto the national consciousness; the population repeatedly hears the left-wing point of view advocated. By comparison, the one right-wing party, always seeking the centre, will most often not even bring right-wing issues up. The job of a centre-left or centre-right party is always to follow the polls, and move where they think the voters are moving. The job of an ideological party on the left or right is to advance ideas. With three leftist ideological parties, and no rightist ones, only leftist ideas are advanced.

This moves what is called the “Overton window,” of what people consider acceptable solutions and acceptable discussions, ever further left.

Something like the People’s Party of Canada, an “NDP of the right,” might, Coyne suggests, be exactly what we need to keep our politics healthy. It could do the job of presenting a the right-wing view, leaving the Conservatives, like the Liberals, to tack to the centre for power.

People fear this because of the example of the Reform Party, whose rivalry with the PCs seemingly sustained Chretien’s Liberals in power for a generation.

But the reason that was a problem is that Reform was not an ideological right-wing party. Preston Manning never identified it as either left or right. It was a party of Western regional alienation. As it grew in success, it challenged the PCs for the centre-right. And so the anti-government vote was indeed split until one or the other party could establish dominance. Because of the splintering, at one point during the transition, the Bloc Quebecois was actually the Official Opposition.

The PPC, if it survives, seems well-positioned to fill this need for a non-regional ideological party of the right. Although Coyne does not like it.

Andrew Coyne in my Dreams

Last night I had a vivid nightmare.

I dreamt that Andrew Coyne had died.

It was so vivid that, as soon as I awoke, I actually had to go online and check.

I do not usually remember my dreams. That I did this time suggests this one was important.

The death of Andrew Coyne would be the death of rational political discourse in Canada.

Coyne, after all, is the only one left doing it.

Everyone else is shouting at one another. Notably in parliamentary question period. It is all talking points, rhetoric, and insult. Half of us are completely out of touch with basic realities, and do not want to be in touch. Coyne is the only guy who actually analyses an issue, on its merits.

Although he may live on, the dream that Coyne represents may indeed have died.

Notwithstanding My Huge Respect for Andrew Coyne...

I generally worship at the feet of Andrew Coyne. He almost never resorts to name-calling or prejudicial language, but makes his cases purely on their merits. He is fair to the opposing viewpoint. But that is not to say he is never wrong.

He is wrong now. He has just written a column objecting to the Notwithstanding Clause in the Canadian constitution. The Notwithstanding Clause allows Canadian legislatures to pass legislation that is invulnerable to court challenge on grounds of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As a further check, any such exemption must be renewed by new legislation every five years.

“Why,” he asks, “is there such a ready market for invoking the notwithstanding clause, by means of which governments are permitted to suspend the rights guaranteed in the Charter, on the sole proviso that they declare openly they are doing so?”

I don’t see his objection at all. Firstly, there is certainly no “ready market” here. Since the Notwithstanding Clause was inserted in the Canadian constitution in 1982, it has only been used by two provincial legislatures. It has never been used by the federal government. Of the two provinces, it was used only once by Saskatchewan, and unnecessarily: the legislation, it turned out, conformed with the Charter anyway. It was used as a matter of course, and of protest, by the PQ government in Quebec for its first few years, but then abandoned. It was attempted once more since, later, by a Quebec government, but they backed down in the face of public protest.

So it is hardly being overused. Why should we not want to preserve it, then, as a constitutional escape valve in case of need? This seems especially necessary because the Canadian constitution is exceptionally difficult to amend.

Removing the notwithstanding clause gives the courts dictatorial powers. They are simply on their honour, as professionals, not to abuse it. This gives me pause.

It is not so much, as Coyne claims, a question of allowing the legislature to suspend charter rights, as allowing them to overrule a rogue court judgment they feel does not itself conform to the charter. Surely Coyne cannot suppose this to be impossible? Judges are not infallible.

Do we need the courts to be supreme over the legislature? Why? They have never been so in Britain, and Britain has a reputation for preserving human rights as good as Canada’s.

It seems to me that having a formal constitutional guarantee of rights is never itself of much real value. The old Soviet Union had an exemplary constitutional bill of rights, as does Communist China. It all really boils down in the end to the will of those in charge. They can twist the words any way they want; that is a historical truth. Who would have suspected two hundred years ago that a right to gay marriage was in the US Constitution?

So it is really a matter of who we trust more to protect our real, God-given rights: a small group of learned professionals, or the general popular will?

It seems to me that the current “Notwithstanding Clause” is a nearly perfect solution: the courts place a check on the popular will, and their prestige counts for something, but ultimately, the popular will can place a check on the courts as well.

Coyne on the Mulroney Case

Andrew Coyne demonstrates once again that he is a national treasure with his masterful summation of the Mulroney-schreiber affair.

It's Mulroney's bad luck that Coyne is on the case. He's not going to get lost in the complicated details, and he is not going to lose interest.

This is what journalism can be.