A Historic Election

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this, but I hear online that the Trudeau Liberals are forming a government with the lowest share of the popular vote in Canadian history. That's how splintered the vote was this time.

Canadian Federal Election: The Hangover

I am not surprised by the Canadian election results. They are about as the polls predicted. But they are saddening.

Sad that Trudeau has been re-elected, with a not-all-that-much-reduced caucus after SNC-Lavalin. That suggests a tolerance for corruption in our government which will surely encourage its spread.

Sad that Maxime Bernier lost his seat. He was the voice of honesty in our parliament and politics. He was the only one speaking on some important issues. Honesty was punished. This will discourage its spread. I fear he may give up the fight; although on election night he said the PPC carries on.

Sad that Lisa Raitt lost her seat. She was an important voice, perhaps THE voice, for decency and tolerance beyond partisanship in our politics. Our civil discourse has already become demented. This will encourage it to get worse. Mudslinging is now rewarded; respecting your political opponents is punished.

Sad that the BQ has surged, and the NDP declined, in Quebec. So much for a return to healthy normalcy in Quebec politics. Back to the endless barren impoverishing fight over sovereignty and mutual regional antagonism. Bernier’s loss is alarming for the same reason.

Sad in the same way that Ralph Goodale lost his seat. The Liberals will now be in government, with no prominent voices from Alberta or Saskatchewan. Just what we need—renewed Western alienation.

Sad that Jane Philpott lost her seat. Like Bernier, a lonely voice for honesty in our politics, and punished for it. First by her party, now by the electors. We won’t now see such honour soon again.

Sad too that nobody’s results were so bad as to prompt a leadership change. All of them can now justify staying on. The lack of inspiring leadership at the federal level is itself gravely dangerous for Canadian unity.

In fact, the result shows just how important Stephen Harper’s leadership was as PM. As soon as he was voted out, all hell is breaking out. All the divisions that seemed to rather quickly dissipate when he took charge are reappearing.

Final Election Prediction

Warren Kinsella.

I called the last Canadian election wrong. I thought the highest likelihood, as I recall, was for a Conservative minority. If not, an NDP minority. But then, most people got it wrong.

So, one day out, what about this time?

I expect a weak Liberal minority.

That is what the polls predict. The polls, we find recently, can be wrong, and they tend consistently to be wrong in the same direction: they underestimate the conservative vote.

But I think Scheer may have been hurt by the last-minute revelation that he was paying Warren Kinsella to subvert the PPC.

That sends a bad message to Scheer’s base. Firstly, a lot of them have been sympathetic to Bernier’s platform, but planning to vote Conservative strategically. This revelation underlines the sense that there really is no difference between the Tories and the Liberals anyway: in the backrooms, Scheer was in cahoots with an arch-Liberal operative. They’re all the same bunch, it seems. And he was hiring Kinsella to push the same divisive message as the Liberals, that those on the right were all “racists.” A false claim enough conservative voters have themselves been victimized by. To this basket of deplorables, Scheer must now look like an enemy agent. Or at best, someone you cannot trust.

At the same time, this tends at a stroke to discredit any and all charges against the PPC of racism. One must now assume they were all mocked up by Kinsella. Many people may now give them a second look.

The likely result is that some of Scheer’s base will stay home, having lost their enthusiasm. Others will vote PPC when they would before have voted Tory for strategic reasons. This should shift a few percentage points away from the Conservatives, and in this race, a few percentage points are the whole hockey game.

For these times, I think Scheer chose the wrong campaign strategy. His idea was the old one, of triangulating to win the centre from Trudeau. My sense is this no longer works, because with social media, they can go back and see what you said before. Now, consistency counts more.

The polls seem to confirm this. Scheer’s attempts to fudge and shuffle to the middle have bought him nothing. His polling has not budged beyond the traditional Conservative base. The parties that have gained support through the campaign are the ideological ones: the NDP and the BQ.

Polls show the PPC so far down that I doubt they will elect anyone other than Bernier. But at least, with this last minute bombshell, they have the potential to surprise. For one thing, it puts them at the centre of attention just before the vote. It positions them as the one party to vote for to really buck the establishment. And the bogus label of racism is now discredited.

Perhaps the next question is who will be the new Conservative leader?

Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer Do

This CBC news item may explain why Warren Kinsella has come out so strongly against Justin Trudeau this election: he's been bought. He's working for the Conservatives behind the scenes.

A Loathsome Cult?

Longtime Liberal backroom eminence, and one time right-hand man to Jean Chretien, has come out rather passionately against voting Liberal-Trudeau this time.

https://torontosun.com/news/national/election-2019/kinsella-why-i-cant-vote-liberal-on-oct-21

One gets the feeling he is not telling the whole story: that he has some personal chip on his shoulder, or that he knows something going about the smoky backrooms that we don't know.

Are the Winds in Canada Shifting?

Seems like I scored a clear miss on my reading of the recent Canadian leaders’ debate. I thought Jagmeet Singh did not do what he needed to do. But it seems to be the consensus among the pundits that Singh was “the winner.”

Mainstream media left-wing bias? But Steve Paikin had a pollster reporting the same, based on overnight polling. It seems it was I who was blinded by ideological bias.

I agree that Singh scored for being likeable. I just did not think that mattered, because for likeability he was ideologically up against Elizabeth May, who is more so. So that, I thought, was not going to sway votes.

The pollster says it has.

Partisans of Scheer need not panic, however. This should be good news for them. Singh pulls votes from the Liberals, for the most part. A more even split between them lets the Tories take more ridings. Singh would have a lot of ground to make up before he actually challenged for power.

But buoyed by my wrong call here, let me make another.

I have a vague sense that we have come to an inflection point in the campaign, and in Canadian politics. Possibly even a watershed.

I mean the recent video of Antifa members harassing an elderly woman with a walker who was trying to attend a Bernier event in Hamilton. They blocked her way; they loudly chanted “Nazi scum! Off our streets!” 

Note that the clip featured here is from RT, Russian TV. It is getting international attention.

It may have pulled the claimed moral high ground out from under the forces of “progressivism” in the public mind. The absurdity of the charge was too apparent. It was too apparent who was the bully, and who the bullied. Mainstream media reports have tried to obscure it, but the video itself was too vivid.

Someone was then able to ID one of the Antifa members in the video, and outed the man behind the mask on YouTube. He turned out to be a recent (2015) Syrian immigrant. Who, we are then shown, has a history of rioting. 

https://www.facebook.com/rick.boswick/videos/2667612919944522/

The optics could not have been better for Bernier’s cause: a recent immigrant from Syria, of all places, declaring exclusive ownership of the streets of Canada, showing hatred towards a native-born Canadian simply exercising her democratic franchise. And a little old disabled lady, at that.

“They hate us, they are violent, they lack all humane instincts, and they plan to take over.” That’s the visual message.

His family runs a restaurant on Queen West. More bad optics, violating the popular meme of destitute Syrian refugees. Looks like they were economic migrants after all.

Said restaurant was soon identified, as it bore the suspect’s family name, and some online called for a boycott.

Within days, the family announced the restaurant’s closing. They said the hostility they were getting on social media was apparently too much.

Doxxing is immoral. The family, as opposed to the individual, may bear no blame.

On the other hand: the perp was wearing a mask. Like the masks once worn by the KKK, almost demands a public unmasking.

And was this deliberate doxxing? Or was the matter simply self-evident by the restaurant’s name?

It was the family’s decision to close the restaurant. Nobody else made them do this, and so nobody else may deserve any blame for it. Obviously, they had suffered some very bad publicity, very likely to harm their business. Welcome to the free market.

Some were calling for a boycott. Okay: the left has made boycotting businesses for the slightest of reasons standard practice. It is something right-wingers have long just had to live through.

Did they get death threats? Any prominent figure on the right has been getting death threats for years.

The message the closing of the restaurant conveyed seems to be that the left has a glass jaw.

I think some people on the right now smell blood. And some on the left are smelling their own.

Predator may suddenly be prey, and prey may now need to be reckoned with. They, these despicable “right-wingers,” may be really angry, it seems, and not inclined to just take it anymore. It’s no longer going to be just fun for the left.

It’s probably nothing, as Kate McMillan would say.

But I attended a local all-candidates rally a couple of weeks ago, I think the day after the video surfaced, and then another just last night. The same set of candidates. At the first, the other parties tried to hammer the PPC to death, with their verbal bicycle locks, for their stand on immigration and on climate change. I noted pushback from some in the audience then. I thought I detected surprise in the candidates. Their expected applause lines were suddenly drawing flak. They seemed to pull back for the rest of the night.

Politicians are always brave at attacking nonexistent or absent enemies. But they are not going to oppose anyone real to their face. They might have a vote.

Last night, nobody took a jab at the PPC. The unkindest cut was just the Liberal saying he had no idea how they planned to finance their promises. That seemed a backhanded compliment. It was as if suddenly they were understood as an otherwise appealing electoral option.

Aside from the Liberal, none of the other candidates, all further to the left, even referred to the PPC or their stands on the issues. It was as though they were afraid to test those waters; afraid that if they made their disagreement plain, it might lose them support.

Meantime, Andrew Scheer just announced a new tougher stand on turning away refugees at the border. His pollsters may have told him something. Until now, he has been triangulating to the left.

It is all unrepresentative, anecdotal, and mostly just my sense of smell. Which has recently been proven unreliable.

Make of it what you will.

Canadian English-language Leaders' Debate

Who won last night’s Canadian leaders’ debate?

This time, at least, that seems to be the wrong question. Winning and losing really only makes sense in a debate between two sides. It is artificial when you have six.

Each probably had different objectives; everyone did well.

Let’s instead look at each in turn.

Andrew Scheer’s job, I suspect, was to position himself as the obvious choice if you wanted to defeat Trudeau. He needed too to overcome suspicions that he was a milquetoast.

He accordingly went after Trudeau immediately with both barrels. Asked, as I recall, about foreign policy, his response referred to both blackface and firing Jody Wilson-Raybould.

I think he did well at, on the one hand, looking combative, and on the other, still appearing dignified and in control. What he said was harsh, and he interrupted with abandon, yet he retained a calm tone of voice. I think it was effective.

When he raised the bit about Trudeau’s campaign using two planes, he was well-prepared for Trudeau’s inevitable response about using carbon offsets. He responded that “carbon offsets” were something only the rich could afford, something the average Canadian cannot resort to. I think that rang true, and played to a growing perception of Trudeau as privileged.

He got in a great dig, perhaps memeable, perhaps killing this line of Liberal attack for the rest of this campaign, on Trudeau’s tactic of linking Scheer with the less popular Doug Ford. “You seem obsessed with Ontario politics. I understand there is a vacancy for the Ontario Liberal leadership…”

Soon after this Trudeau started to sound a little shrill; I think it may have knocked him off his balance.

Scheer scored likeability points as well, preventing him from coming across as too harsh, with humour: like ostentatiously turning toward Trudeau when told he had his choice of whom to challenge. He scored again by generously praising Singh when the issue of Bill 21 and tolerance came up. This was at no cost: Singh is not appealing, for the most part, to the same voters. Any vote for Singh is more likely to be taken from Trudeau.

He was also ready for attack from Bernier, at his right flank. He accused Bernier of having changed his own positions on the issues on which he claims to be the authentic conservative voice. Bernier might have had a comeback; but the structure of the debate did not allow it.

Scheer was evasive at times. May hit him for this early on, and the charge may resonate. He was evasive on Bill 21, evasive on pipelines through Quebec, and evasive on abortion. This may do him no harm in his contest with Trudeau, who is more evasive; but it may hurt him by comparison to Bernier, among his supporters on the right.

Justin Trudeau was always going to have a tough time. He was the guy to knock off, and he had a record to justify. He faced challenges on two sides: he could lose by leaking votes rightward to Scheer, or leftward to Singh and May, and they were going to attack him from both angles. At one point he lamented, “I knew I was going to be criticized by some for building pipelines, and by others for not building pipelines.”

Which was probably his worst, and most revealing, moment: it suggested, first, that he thought it was all about him, and that he did not have principles. And that he did not grasp basic realities: could this be a surprise? Surely only to one who felt entitled, privileged.

And it opened him to a great response from Scheer: “you did nothing.”

Listened to closely, too, Trudeau is often talking nonsense. The words are all that matter. At one point, he actually argued that we needed pipelines in order to sell more gas and oil to raise the money to reduce our use of gas and oil. Perfectly postmodern; but it seems there is a simpler solution.

But overall to me he seemed well-versed, with facts at his fingertips. He performed much better than in the debates of 2015. I was expecting less; I was expecting him to show cracks under the pressure. At one point, near the end, after a hit from Scheer, but debating Elizabeth May, he sounded a little out of control of his emotions. But otherwise, he seemed fine.

He drew blood, I think, against Singh over Bill 21. Not especially clever of him—Tom Mulcair, in Singh’s own party, had just complained about this. It was raised directly by the moderators before Trudeau raised it. But Singh could not respond clearly, because he feared a firm stand would lose the NDP Quebec support. On the other hand, Trudeau’s own stand is barely different from Singh’s, for the same reasons; his firm stand is only to "leave the door open" to challenging the law in the future. Singh might have made something of that. A little honesty might have gone a long way. Instead, Singh tried to make it all improbably enough about big corporations and poverty. Lame as a two-legged cow.

Singh’s main task was to distinguish himself from both Trudeau and May. I don’t think he did this, but I think it was an impossible task. He did show a sense of humour, boosting his likeability; Trudeau, by contrast, showed little humour. He got a good dig in on Trudeau, unexpected by me at least, over two of his cabinet ministers supposedly using offshore tax havens. Trudeau was not able to respond; again, this may have been because of the debate format.

Overall, however, Singh sounded to me too much like an overeager schoolboy. A CTV commentator this morning declared him the winner of the debate. I can’t see that.

Asked a question on foreign policy, the NDP leader actually led with the need to “stand up to Trump.” This contrasted rather awkwardly with Bernier, who had just pledged to “Stand up for Canada.” It suggested that to the NDP, opposing the current US administration was Canada’s primary foreign policy objective.

I am not sure that will play well with the general public. If it does, it certainly does not reflect well on Canadians. Are we that nuts?

Elizabeth May did well, as she does, on sounding sincere. She took on Singh, for a second time, on the fatuousness of claiming he could pay for all his new spending simply by increasing taxes on millionaires. She was also casting doubt on her own spending plans; but in pointing this out, she demonstrated honesty and sobriety. People do value honesty when offered. Most politicians either do not believe this, or lie habitually.

May put a great hole in Blanchet for speaking of Albertans as others. This was fairly irrelevant politically; May’s support in Alberta is no doubt negligible, and Blanchet’s is nonexistent. It is not likely to help May in Quebec. It suggested, again, that May genuinely is a conviction politician.

But May also said, at one point, flatly and gratuitously, “anyone with white skin has privilege.” Sincerity only goes so far; perhaps Vlad the Impaler, too, was sincere in his beliefs.

Yves-Francois Blanchet had no objectives, and nothing to lose. So he was mostly able just to have a good time.

I think his presence, however, was useful. For example, he was able to give the common Quebecois position on Bill 21 and laicization. I think it is fundamentally wrong, but it does have logic behind it, and people in Anglophone Canada never get to hear it. As Blanchet rightly pointed out, it has nothing to do with race or with people different in appearance—a falsehood pushed by Singh in the debate. Calling everything you disagree with racist is cheap, dishonest, and the ideal way to popularize racism.

Blanchet neatly nailed Trudeau on his usual evasiveness, by asking him a straight up or down question, and pointing out that he did not answer it: “No answer?” And at the end: “No answer.”

He also got in a deft shot at Bernier, predicting that he would interrupt, and announcing the precise second when he did.

Up to that point, Bernier was interrupting everyone. From then on, he seemed to mostly hold his tongue and fade into the background. Probably not the best strategy, for him; suggesting that Blanchet scored a clean punch to the chin.

Which brings us to Bernier, who probably had most to gain by a good performance here.

Maxime Bernier needed to do several simple things: he needed to inform the public on what the PPC’s platform was, since this has generally been suppressed and falsified in the media. He had to make a distinction between himself and Scheer; and he had to sound like the guy to turn to if you are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, to surf the populist wave that Trump found in the US, and Farage in the UK.

I think he did the job, but nothing spectacular. There were no surprise revelations, no quick and withering rejoinders. He said only things he has said before. Except for one memorable phrase: referring to Trudeau’s and Scheer’s promises of tax reductions for specific purposes as “boutique tax credits.” Implying several things at once.

He oddly misfired, on the other hand, in accusing Scheer of not reducing foreign aid. Scheer had just referred to his plan to reduce foreign aid, and caught fire from May for it. Bernier seems to have not been paying attention. Or perhaps his English failed him.

Following the comments on the CBC live feed, the largest number seemed to see Bernier as the overall winner. Either he was, or he has a lot more support than the polls seem to show. Or else his supporters are more likely than others to be watching this debate online on CBC. This seems unlikely—even assuming Bernierites are more likely to be computer geeks, would the right prefer the public broadcaster to the various private channels available?

Perhaps this reflects the reality that his role was intrinsically easier to play than that of Scheer, or Trudeau, or Singh, or May. Unlike them, he was able to turn all his guns in one direction. If all the other candidates turned on him, that was only to his own advantage: it distinguished him as the voice of populist dissent.

Given the barest opening, a question on foreign affairs, Bernier led with his proposal to reduce immigration—his most controversial stand, in the eyes of the media. This was deliberately bringing down enemy fire. But Bernier obviously thought this was his best issue. As he repeatedly said, 49% of Canadians want less immigration; only 6% want more. Yet all five other parties want more immigration.

His judgement therefore seems right. This is a winning issue for him.

Bernier went after Singh on free speech. A bit surprising, since Singh is not appealing to the same voters. This makes me think that he did so out of genuine commitment to principle: Bernier really believes in liberal values. Singh soiled himself by doubling down, insisting on someone’s right—necessarily, in the end, his own—to silence opinions they consider objectionable. I hope others were as shocked by this as I was. I hope this is a winning issue for Bernier.

I know Bernier’s position on the Indian Act, and I wish he had injected it into the debate on “indigenous rights.” But it was probably his strategy to remain mostly silent. The boondoggle of Indian affairs is far too complex and too generally misrepresented to address in a sound bite. Scheer perhaps did as well as could be done in this context by pointing out that “advice and consent” of indigenous peoples is something that needs to actually be measured on the ground, and never has been; their opinions are forever imposed on them by outsiders acting in their name. As if they are to be perpetual wards of someone or other. Bernier did call, at least, for property rights on reserves.

I was disappointed not to hear Bernier’s position on Bill 21, a liberal/libertarian issue. But he was probably wise, again, to duck it. Apparently, he supports the principle of laicization. Nobody but the Bloc can win on Bill 21: the position that is popular in Quebec is unpopular in the other provinces. Bernier deserves credit, however, for bringing up “supply management,” his old signature issue, and calling for the construction of pipelines through Quebec; considered by others third-rail issues in Quebec.

Perhaps the most telling part of the debate was when the issue of abortion came up; something other leaders thought they could use against Scheer. Chaos seemed to immediately ensue, everyone shouting at once, Singh and Blanchet apparently breaking into their own side debate.

I think this is revealing: abortion is actually the single most important issue effecting our politics and culture. It is what divides us.

Very much like slavery in the antebellum USA.

Like slavery, it cannot be avoided forever, and the longer it is avoided, the nastier the inevitable confrontation may become.

An Electorate on a Razor's Edge

The Toronto Archdiocese held a candidates’ debate last night. Not a leaders’ debate; just designated spokesmen for each party, all of whom were candidates, but for various ridings.

Apparently the hall sold out within 17 hours. The event was therefore broadcast to four other venues, and livestreamed. A friend watched from Vancouver.

As with the local all-candidates’ meeting I attended earlier, this suggests a strong interest this time.

Given that the platforms of the three main parties are almost the same, why? What is so at stake?

The opinion polls, moreover, show little movement.

It seems to me the explanation is that people are interested in the election, but have not yet made up their minds whom to support. Meantime, they are parking their votes in their traditional spots.

This means the campaign matters more than usual.

Trudeau is probably in the most trouble. The voters already know him; they have what they need to make a decision.

This unusually large group of voters must therefore be trying to decide among the alternatives. The opportunity is for one opposition party or another, with a good campaign, to pick up the lion’s share of the remainder and suddenly sweep ahead.

More or less as the Liberals and Trudeau managed to do last time.

This is also bad news for the Conservatives, since they are the obvious alternative if the consideration is to vote out Trudeau. They are failing to appeal, and voters are instead nosing around the NDP, Greens, and PPC.

But then again, maybe not so much the NDP. Current polls show them well down from their support last election. Even traditional NDP voters are apparently not parking there.

The big opportunity is for the Greens and the PPC. Perhaps the BQ too, but they are not a factor in the ridings where I have seen these turnouts.

If it seems odd that voters would be undecided between the PPC and NDP, supposedly at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, this is the usual thing. Political analysts are big on ideology. Disaffected voters are usually most interested in sending the strongest message they can to the ancien regime that they are dissatisfied. When, in 1968, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, the candidate that gained the largest share of his supporters was George Wallace—the southern segregationist. We saw the same dynamic last Ontario election; polls were surging back and forth between the PCs under Ford and the NDP under Horvath.

This is also what we have seen elsewhere recently; in the last few European elections. The electorate has been increasingly forking to Greens, on the left, and populist/nationalist parties on the right.

I expect this will be the big story this election: gains by both the PPC and the Greens. The question is which will surge the most.

This should produce a very unstable minority government, either Liberal or Conservative. Surging, neither Greens nor PPC are going to be interested in propping anybody up. NDP might back the Liberals, but doing so risks surrendering their usual support to the Greens for the sake of self-identifying with a sinking ship. So a new election is likely quite soon.

Will it be PM May or PM Bernier?

Going to the Candidates' Debate

Conservative candidate Nadir.

Last night I attended a local candidates’ debate here in the Canadian federal riding which, to preserve anonymity and protect the ashamed, we shall refer to as Bitches-East Yuck.

Such an event is probably not representative of anything at all, but nevertheless, I did it, so you must suffer through my notes.

First note: it was a packed house, in a large church. This suggests great public interest in this go-about. This may suggest trouble for the incumbents. Or it may not. Experts argue.

Second note: Liberal candidate Nathaniel Eelskin-Jones oozed charisma. If he survives this election, this guy has a future.

The Libs were out in force with glossy big flyers to hand out. The candidate himself extended a hand to all at the entrance to the church beforehand. A highly professional, well-funded operation. Not hard to recognize the establishment.

Four out of five candidates showed: Greens, Liberals, NDP, and PPC. The Conservative standard-bearer did not show. A pity, because she seems to be gorgeous. This no-show evoked the earliest boos from the audience.

This may suggest that Justin Trudeau’s non-appearance at national debates has similarly hurt him. On the other hand, this riding is historically unTory: they’ve never won it. It is a swing riding between the Liberals and NDP. They probably would have booed her presence at least as much as her absence.

Given this, the PPC candidate, Debandoug Mackenzie, deserves credit for courage in coming.

Actually, I am not quite accurate in saying that only the Tory candidate failed to show. So did Joe Ring, running for the None of the Above Party.

Unsurprisingly, given the electoral history, the Liberal and the NDP candidates got the most applause at their introduction. I could not tell who got more.

The NDP candidate, May Day, ranking challenger to the reigning Nat, was not impressive to look at. Short, squat, long straight hair, she looked like a campus radical from central casting. For some reason, leftist women are rarely attractive, and rightist women always are. She introduced herself as a human rights lawyer. She probable won likeability points by mentioning she was also in a klezmer band.

The Green Man was thin, young, bespectacled, and bowed of tie. Not a serious look. Let’s call him Waldo. If you need to ask why, look closer.

Debandoug Mackenzie was tall and blonde. An appropriate contrast to the NDPer aside her.

The MC, a local news anchor, twice jumped right in immediately after Ms. Mackenzie had stopped speaking, stepping all over the applause. He did this to no other candidate all night. This may have been to hurt, by masking the applause, or to help, by masking its absence. Since there was actually pretty enthusiastic applause, and it began before he did, I highly suspect the former. Like most gentle folk of the press currently, this guy seemed fairly blatantly partisan and on the left. Perhaps the Conservative candidate, Nazeerah Nadir, was forewarned.

I can even name this guy's preferred party: he made it easy being Green. At one point, he cited scandals affecting all the party leaders, in a feint at being even-handed. He had to stretch a bit to hit Jagmeet Singh—only that he had not yet visited the Maritimes. But he actually said it was hard to think of anything against Elizabeth May.

This no doubt came as a surprise to many who had heard of photoshopped straws, or endorsing separatist candidates, or failing to support her own Green candidate against Jody Wilson-Raybould. It was all like the persistent media myth that the Obama administration was free of scandals.

He was not so fond of the Liberals.

For the PPC, he asked about Bernier calling Greta Thunberg “mentally unstable.” Hardly a public issue; more a declaration of partisan allegiances. Mackenzie drew boos by responding, in part, that this was admitted publicly by both Greta and her mother. She might have added that Bernier did not bring it up in his tweet: he was actually agreeing with supporters of Thunberg who were referring to her as autistic. Presumably the problem was no more than his choice of words?

But the boos then also drew pushback from others in the audience.

Not necessarily significant. Obviously, all candidates would have brought with them a corps of supporters.

Later, the moderator asked each candidate in turn what government could do about the housing crisis. The other three all talked about the government building more housing. Odd that none thought of the possible participation of the private sector. But then it came to Mackenzie, who after a halting start saying only that it was not a federal responsibility, said there were two sides to the equation, supply and demand. Short term, it was hard to do anything about the supply. But we can reduce the demand by taking in fewer immigrants.

This provoked a stronger reaction than the Thunberg comment. Someone from the middle rows shouted out, “if that’s how you feel, you should leave.”

But there was again immediate pushback: someone else shouted out, “if you don’t want free debate, YOU should leave.” “This is Canada; we have freedom of speech. We are a free people.”

This may have changed something. Mackenzie was not booed again. When Mr. Green tried to condemn her from the front of the room, for being opposed to immigration, there were voices calling out, “no one said that.”

That seemed to end attempts to attack her from the podium as well. She made her closing statement all about the current assault on freedom of speech. She referred to the troubles around Maxime Bernier’s talk in Hamilton, and specifically to a little old lady with a walker who was confronted and her progress blocked by a swarm of young blackshirts ironically shouting at her that she was a fascist.

This time her ending was not stepped on by the moderator, and she was given energetic applause. There were no boos.

As the meeting broke up, she seemed to have at least as many audience members surrounding her as anyone else. I saw Mr. Green and May Day talking to each other.

I think both audience and other candidates read the room and realized, perhaps with some surprise, that scapegoating the PPC was not going to help them here. But then again, why bother? The PPC is no threat to anyone else except the Tories, and the Tory candidate was not there.

They turned instead, sensibly enough, on the Liberals.

Support for Natty Eelskin-Jones seemed to wane as the night wore on. The moderator asked each candidate how free they would be to dissent with their leader. Eelskin-Jones was the obvious target. He insisted he was perfectly free; that got guffaws. Everyone, of course, was thinking of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. Eelskin-Jones prevaricated in typical political fashion, saying he was personally “not entirely supportive” of kicking the two ministers out of caucus, but “the way things unfolded” it was necessary, because they had made it “personal.”

That got applause from some in the audience. But I suspect to others it diminished him.

As he made his closing statement, he drew hoots: “pipeline!” “SNC-Lavalin!”

The PPC candidate and the NDPer both insisted that their parties and leaders left them free to vote their conscience. Audience members who followed the news knew this was untrue of the NDP, who have recently bounced candidates for little cause. But nobody called Ms. Day on it. Mr. Green, a bit more honestly, insisted that Green MPs would be free to vote their own views on all matters “except a woman’s right to choose.”

Now isn’t that peculiar, and isn’t that an indication that there is something wrong here? The official raison d’etre for the Green Party is, of course, the environment. But once the chips are down, that is not their prime concern at all.

Waldo’s mention may have reminded some in the audience that the Liberal Party has the same dogma: Justin Trudeau is on record that nobody can run for the Liberals who does not support unrestricted abortion.

Nobody took the matter further. It all came too close, perhaps, to pulling back the forbidden curtain.

May Day’s performance was perfectly unremarkable, and nobody ever challenged her or gave her a tough question.

Maybe that means she won. Or maybe that means nobody is very excited about the NDP.

Fade to Black

Cultural appropriation.

I have been suspending judgement on whether the blackface scandal was going to sink Trudeau. A lot of commentators have been, it seems. Probably for the same reason I was: if the SNC-Lavalin scandal could not sink him, could anything? It looked as though his support might be invulnerable to scandal. Some politicians are like that: Bill Clinton, Doug Ford, Donald Trump.

But tracking the reaction since, I think he is sunk.

Not because the multiplying incidents shows he is a racist. They don’t; and as I have noted, it is arbitrary to see anything racist about blackface. And not because they show he is a hypocrite; although they do, and this does hurt him. Because they show he is a fool.

Not a clown. Donald Trump or Rob Ford or Ralph Klein are clowns. People like clowns. A clown makes us laugh.

A fool doesn't know he is funny. He is not in on the joke.

People do not like fools, especially self-important fools. Other examples: Dan Quayle; Kim Campbell; Joe Clark.

Fools are tiresome.

Trudeau is now being mocked by foreign commentators. I just typed "blackface" into Google images. The first five results were Justin Trudeau. Canadians care a lot how they are perceived abroad. My NDP friend who cannot vote for Singh was evaluating all the candidates on this one question: “Can you imagine them representing Canada abroad?”

Once you become a figure of fun, you're done.

Tom, We Hardly Knew Ye

Tom Mulcair

A friend who has voted NDP his entire life says he cannot vote this time for Jagmeet Singh.

Perhaps this gives some insight into why the NDP’s support has sagged.

My friend feels that Singh lacks gravitas. “I can't imagine him representing Canada abroad.”

He did not say how he would vote; he did say Scheer and May both also lacked gravitas. Of course, I feel the same way about Justin Trudeau, only much more so. He did not mention Trudeau, but surely because in this case the matter was obvious. I got the impression he was just going to stay home.

Then he mentioned Tom Mulcair—how wrong the NDP was to vote him out.

I think that may be important. Singh is being compared to Mulcair as much as to Trudeau. Mulcair had gravitas. Next to him, Singh looks and sounds like a student body president.

I think this is a fatal error indulged in by both the Tories and the NDP. Seeing Trudeau’s success, they did the boneheaded typical politico thing and voted in new leaders who were as similar as possible to Trudeau; young, good-looking, inexperienced. Giving the voters no alternative once they saw the problem with youth, inexperience, and lack of seriousness. (May may not have youth, but she surely lacks gravitas.) Mulcair could have torn up this field and left only embers.

On top of that, there is a festering sense that Mulcair was treated badly by the party. I think my friend resented that as a Quebecker—and NDP support in Quebec has collapsed.

If the NDP is decimated this election, Singh will almost certainly be obliged to resign. If that happens, intelligent NDPers not fond of extinction of their species should organize a Draft Mulcair movement as soon as possible.

Is the Genie Out of the Bottle?

Time's photo. Toga! Toga!.

How damaging is the Trudeau “blackface” scandal?

To me, it is trivial on its face, so to speak. It seems perfectly arbitrary to take offense at someone blackening their face; we see nothing wrong with people whitening their face, like the traditional clown, and then representing people with white faces as foolish. Why the double standard?

But initial indications are that others see it as a big deal. Time magazine first ran it; Drudge Report is headlining it—both American sources, not folks deeply interested in Canadian politics.

It shows Trudeau as a hypocrite: attacking Conservative candidates based on something in their distant past found on social media has been central thus far to the Liberal campaign. At the very least, they’re probably going to have to shut up about that stuff now. All of it backfires now. Can they quickly pivot to another strategy?

There were already signs of panic in Trudeau personally. Paul Wells has represented the Liberal campaign so far as a massive feint, in which Trudeau was largely irrelevant and ignored by his own team, making no major announcements. The real battle was the regular leaks against Conservative candidates. They may have been forced into such an odd approach in the first place because Trudeau was not up to carrying the ball; witness as well his strategically bizarre absence from the Maclean’s debate.

So what’s left if they cannot do this either?

Unfortunately, Trudeau’s expression in the photo looks slightly like a leer, as well, as he embraces some woman from behind. That it is from behind suggests visually, fairly or not, that the physical contact is uninvited.

This may evoke memories of previous accusations of groping against Trudeau. And his callous treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. It all may confirm the public impression that he is just a privileged frat boy who views women and minorities as useful tools or worse.

It even casts a worse light on his costumed clowning during his ill-remembered state visit to India. Wasn’t that a bit of blackface too, then?

It does not help Trudeau either that the leader of the NDP is rather spontaneously brown in the face. A lot of leftward thinkers may feel compelled now to virtue signal their commitment to anti-racism by voting Singh. And Singh naturally has the moral high ground to condemn Trudeau for this in the next debate. It could lead to a devastating exchange; and Trudeau already seems to fear debate. He may grow increasingly erratic now as he tries to medicate himself through the campaign—there is some video evidence that he is already doing so. Some wobbly-kneed public performances.

This sudden snapshot of the Trudeau shadow is exactly what the Tories needed to have a chance at winning the election: voters on the left moving in significant numbers from Liberal to NDP.

I feel sorriest for Pierre Trudeau, whose legacy is being damaged by the self-indulgent follies of his son—as it has been by his wife.

Bernier's In; The Games Begin

I am joyful to hear that the Independent Leaders’ Debate Commission has agreed to let Maxime Bernier into its two debates. The ones that Justin Trudeau, too, has agreed to. Now we get to hear all sides.

To be sure, the big winner here is in theory Justin Trudeau, as it splits his opposition on the right. But that is not a legitimate consideration.

The important thing is that Bernier represents a distinct point of view which would otherwise have been excluded from consideration. That is profoundly bad for democracy. Objectively, I believe his People’s Party did meet the criteria set: candidates running in 90% of ridings, and at least two candidates with a legitimate shot at winning. If this can even be judged this far out.

To be honest, I personally agree with his views. But aside from that, Jagmeet Singh had actually publicly demanded that Bernier be suppressed: that he should be kept out of the debate whether he met the criteria or not, on the grounds that his views were “divisive and hateful.”

This cannot be tolerated in a democracy or a free country. Under these circumstances, excluding Bernier would have looked like endorsing this poisonous view.

Nobody has the right to decide for the general public what they should or should not think. But for the record, to any reasonable person, there is nothing either divisive or hateful in Bernier’s public positions; he came within a whisker, after all, of heading the Conservatives, Canada’s founding party. It would be profoundly sinister to ban him from the debates on these grounds.

And, not incidentally, Singh’s NDP, by contrast, regularly promotes hatred towards identifiable groups: independent businessmen, the well-off, white males, Americans, Trump supporters, and so on. In doing so, it is also deliberately divisive: its pitch is to sectarian interests as a matter of standard policy: “identity politics.”

In all fairness, Singh ought thereby to have excluded himself from the debates. His dishonesty or lack of self-awareness here is staggering.

Now that Bernier is in the debates, I think he has real breakout potential. Although this may help Trudeau, I think Trudeau is the probable winner in any case. When SNC-Lavalin broke, I was sure petite patate was finished. But God seems to have wanted otherwise, splitting the vote on his left between the NDP and the Greens. That should hand the Rouge a fistful of extra seats.

Scheer presented well at the Maclean’s debate. Yet I think his middle-of-the-road approach is ineffective in elections any more. If you dislike Trudeau’s policies, why vote for the Tories, if they offer the same policies? If you find Trudeau incompetent, why turn to someone less experienced? It is a great pity Bernier is not the Tory leader. The one angle on which Scheer can run is on the impression that Trudeau and the Liberals are corrupt. I think that is a tough sell; JT looks incompetent and panicked rather than corrupt.

In any case, for the sake of a full debate, we need to hear from Mad Max.