Poilievre Gets an 87% Approval Vote

 CPC leader Pierre Poilievre won his leadership review vote with over 87%. What does this tell us? 

I'm sure that within Liberal party ranks, there is a certain amount of cheering going on, since Poilievre is polling well behind Mark Carney for "preferred PM".  Almost certainly if an election were held today, the Conservatives would lose (again).   While in the short term, Poilievre's victory might appear to be a boon for the Liberals, I wouldn't be quite so quick to cheer.

Having replaced Jenny Byrne with Steven Outhouse, I think we can expect to see yet another round of "rebranding" applied to Poilievre's image.  His speech last night gave some hints of that beginning.  There was a definite effort not to be quite as obnoxious as he has been in the last year or two (although I doubt very much that he's going to be able to pivot away from a reflexive tendency to attack after 20 years of practice).  Branding, or image, whatever you want to call it, does matter in politics today, and conservatives have a disturbing ability to make otherwise unpalatable candidates look "good enough" to voters who don't pay close attention. 

The real issue with the CPC isn't "the leader", and it really never has been - it's what the party represents and has become over the years from its beginnings as the prairie rump "Reform Party" through to its current form.  Reform was always a party of extremes - weirdly authoritarian and libertarian at the same time, and substantially driven by a bunch of Social Conservative (they aren't really conservative) grievance groups.  

As the party expanded eastward, it ran into a number of roadblocks where they just couldn't seem to make headway - especially in Ontario and Quebec.  That led to a shift and some rebranding efforts that tried to paper over the perception that the party was dominated by Christian Fundamentalists from the Prairies.  Fast forward through the merger with the old Progressive Conservative Party to today, and we need to spend some quality time reading through the party policy book and the policy motions.  

Unfortunately, in these documents lies a ton of policies that the party doesn't talk about - policies which ultimately are designed to implement many aspects of the socially conservative (regressive) state that Prairie Evangelicals have been pushing towards for decades.  Journalist Marci McDonald documented it really well in her book "The Armageddon Factor".  Although the book is now somewhat dated, it does document much of the drive for the religious right to gain control over the Conservative Party.  

Now, in part, we need to understand that when people are accusing the CPC of having a "hidden agenda", it's not that the agenda is "really hidden" - it's well known and documented.  However, when politicians sit there and say "oh, I won't do _THAT_", they're engaging in deceit.  Poilievre has done this repeatedly on the abortion topic, only his party keeps these topics alive in their policy declaration.  

In more recent history, in Alberta we've seen this deceit used by the UCP under Danielle Smith.  So much of what she said she "wouldn't do" while she was running in 2023 mysteriously became legislation starting in 2024.  At this point in time, I wouldn't trust any party that refuses to talk about any topic that's in their policy manual.  

This is fundamentally the core of where Poilievre has a problem - he is at the helm of a party that I characterize as half a dozen angry badgers in a trench coat.  No amount of rebranding is going to address the fundamental issue that the CPC has major players in it that have "views" that are radically divergent from those of most Canadians. 

I take last night's confidence vote in Poilievre as a sign that the CPC has turned inward.  They aren't receptive to the opinions of the broader public, rather they have decided that they are going to attempt to deceive Canadian voters into electing them so they can impose an agenda that is regressive at best.

So, Trump Wants To Decertify Canadian-Built Aircraft

 So, the latest Trumpian temper tantrum is that the US will decertify Bombardier built aircraft.  On the surface, this is as ridiculous as it seems.  Ostensibly, this temper tantrum is over Canada having not (yet) certified several newer models from Bombardier rival Gulfstream.  But is it really?

Consider the following:  only 4 days ago, US Ambassador to Canada Hoekstra was making threats over the purchase of F-35s, and an orchestrated defence of the F-35 started last fall.  The Americans started sweating over the F-35 sale to Canada quite a while ago, and Sweden/Saab's offer presents Canada with the ability to reboot its aerospace industry in a way that we haven't seen since the cancellation of the Avro Arrow project.  

Now, here's where Trump's outburst may in fact finalize Canada's pivot away from the F-35 - let me explain:  

That Is Not A Sales Pitch

According to US Ambassador Hoekstra, if Canada doesn't buy the full fleet of F-35s, "that will affect NORAD".   Coming from the Trump regime, this is another mafia-esque threat that boils down to "do as we tell you, or else".  

Hoekstra might think that yammering on about NORAD, interoperability, and how the F-35 is "the superior aircraft" is some kind of sales flex.  It's actually telling us all that buying the F-35 is ultimately going to be a huge mistake for Canada. 

Every second day, the US is threatening to annex Canada, and as our European friends just learned in the dust-up over Greenland - a deal with Trump made today isn't worth the paper it's written on tomorrow. Why would Canada think we'd be treated any differently if we bought the F-35? 

If I was a defence planner for Canada (I'm not), I'd be looking at the current situation and saying to myself "why would Canada buy a major military asset from a country that is threatening to invade us?".  

The F-35 is very much a "closed, proprietary platform".  What assurances do we have that any planes sent to Canada don't have a "kill switch" buried in their software that Washington can use at will? Fundamentally, there are no such guarantees, and that has been a concern about the F-35 in my mind for a very long time.  

Then there is the servicing of the F-35 itself.  Need parts for the F-35?  Buy it from Lockheed-Martin (now a division of Boeing) ... need major service?  Well that plane now has to be shipped to facilities in the US.  Software updates?  Oh yeah - that's a thing, and those will also have to be installed in US facilities.  Starting to see a problem here, when the US has decided that we're the adversary?  

Hoekstra wants to talk about the F-35 as the "superior aircraft".  Maybe the F-35 is on some levels a "better" aircraft technologically than its rivals - but when the country selling it can so easily turn a fleet of F-35s into "Tarmac Princesses" by choking off parts supply, or by leaving booby traps in the software that enables these craft to fly, technical superiority takes a back seat to "actually flies".

If I were making the buying decisions for Canada's military, I'd be looking at the ground game as it looks today, not how it looked prior to 2016.  The ground game today is very different.  The US has shown itself to be not merely an adversarial nation, but it is one where an agreement today means nothing tomorrow.  This is a purchase that will affect Canada's military for the next 3 decades or more.  Even if the F-35 is technologically "the superior aircraft", that means very little if it effectively hands the US control over the fleet either directly or indirectly.  

Implications For Alberta Separatists From Trump's Invasion of Venezuela

 Yesterday, the US attacked Venezuela and captured its president and his wife.  This move has significant implications not only for Venezuela and its people, but it also stands to have significant consequences for Alberta and its oil industry.

To put it mildly, this has major implications for Alberta separatists, and in particular those who are in a great big hurry to make Alberta "the 51st State".  Let's talk about that.

Alberta Separatist Math Isn't Mathing

So, over at "Alberta Prosperity Project" (APP), they have a "Fully Costed Fiscal Plan".  Besides having a whole ton of wishful thinking in its numbers, it demonstrates that the APP is either wildly optimistic about how things will work out post-separation, or they're assuming that you the voter is only slightly smarter than room temperature milk. 

Let's dive in, shall we? 

So, Queen Dani Doesn't Like Courts?

In a year-end interview, Premier Smith of Alberta complained that "judges aren't accountable", and elected politicians are.  

Like everything else that comes out of today's conservative politicians, this is 1 part truth, 9 parts lie.  Accountability takes many forms, and to frame elections as the only legitimate kind of accountability in our system of government is simply false.  It's convenient for her in the moment, but when she then turns around and complains that "people are abusing recall", one does have to wonder exactly how sincere she really is.  

Smith complains that "we've had 10 years of Justin Trudeau appointing judges", and that "...ideology getting into these judgements ...".  What she's really doing is misrepresenting the process through which judges are appointed in this country, as well as the nature of how judgments are written - judges actually explain their reasoning in their rulings, something that politicians seldom bother with.

We Are In A Constitutional Crisis

We Are In A Constitutional Crisis

Lots of people are arguing that if the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) rules to restrict the Notwithstanding Clause (S33) or the Governor General dusts of the disallowance powers, that it wil trigger a constitutional crisis in Canada.  They are mistaken.

The minute Alberta and Quebec decided to legislate to unreasonably restrict or eliminate rights guaranteed under the Charter, they thrust a constitutional crisis upon all of us.

Quebec, with its "Bill 21" has imposed an unreasonable limitation on religious freedoms for those who work in the civil service of that province.  Quebec’s CAQ government has wrapped a thinly veiled attack on non-Christian faiths in a blanket ban on religious symbols and public prayer.  I don't care how much you want a "secular society", this is going way beyond anything that is defensible under S1 of The Charter. 

In comparison to Quebec, Alberta has been much more aggressive, using S33 to strip workers of rights to collective bargaining, labour action, etc. and to attack transgender people in Alberta.  Further, several of the UCP's more recent actions involve "invoking" Smith's so-called "sovereignty act" - a piece of legislation where the government claims it can simply ignore laws from Ottawa that it doesn't like.  Arguably, that law is on its face unconstitutional - it's little more than a power grab on Alberta's part. 

Make no mistake about it, we are in a constitutional crisis right now.  The minute that two provinces decided that they could redefine what rights citizens in their provinces could enjoy for purely ideological reasons, we were thrust into a crisis. 

Quebec's use of S33 with Bill 21 does not stand up to scrutiny - especially not when it came out in the wake of a failed bid to ban hijabs and other "traditional" headwear.  Bill 21, although it doesn't say it, attacks those whose religiosity is publicly visible - to what end?  What crisis is this addressing that makes the invocation of S33 justified?  As far as I can tell, there is none.  

Similarly, Alberta's use of S33 are indefensible.  The teacher's strike issue might contain a shred of justification in that it is important to resolve the strike quickly.  However, it fails on a subsequent test of whether the government had used (and failed) all of its statutory options - however the government left any number of instruments on the table, up to and including binding arbitration, and went straight to the nuclear option.  

The Alberta government's anti-trans legislation is based on a horrendous amount of disinformation, lies, and hysteria.  It does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny - the evidence it is based on is largely the same pseudo-science evidence that gave us The Cass Review in the UK.  I cannot imagine any aspect of Bills 26, 27 and 29 standing scrutiny under S1 of The Charter.  Smith went to the Notwithstanding option when it was becoming clear that those laws would collapse in the courts under Charter review.

How exactly does Alberta and Quebec end up in what seems like a most unlikely alliance?  Well - truthfully, I don't know the exact answer to that, but we do have some clues.  Really, it stems back to Kenney courting Alberta's extremist fringes, and then musing out loud about "the flames of separatism".  Kenney would go on to provide political support to the "Yellow Vest Convoy" and the subsequent "Freedom Convoy" protests.  Kenney definitely set the UCP on course to align with a separatist/isolationist government in Quebec. 

It should not come as any surprise that a separatist leaning government in Alberta would pivot towards asking Quebec for advice.  It's an old saw in Alberta politics that Quebec receives unmerited "special treatment".   So, an Alberta government desiring to "have more influence" might well look to Quebec for ideas and political strategy.  

Make no mistake about it, Danielle Smith has played a central role in pushing things to where they are.  It is a crisis, and it is a constitutional crisis.  Just because you aren't directly affected by the rights that have been revoked by the UCP in the last 2.5 months, the fact is that the UCP has declared that they see themselves as the final arbiters of what rights you are allowed in Alberta.  If this is allowed to stand, the use of the language "guarantees" in The Charter becomes meaningless, and that would be the most significant change to human rights in Canada since 1982. 

Consider the implications of major cases before the SCC now:

S33 has been used to limit rights without any kind of urgent situation in play.  Sure, Smith and the UCP will argue that there is "urgency" around Bill 26 because "there might be harm to children", and Legault's government no doubt argues that there is "urgency" in fostering a "secular society" that is free from religious symbolism.  Neither party has shown that they are responding to an actual emergency situation.  The governments in both cases could have taken far less drastic steps than they have to develop a basis upon which to act.  

Having taken the actions that they have, Alberta and Quebec have essentially taken the position that "provincial legislatures get to decide your rights".  Think about that carefully for a few moments.  This means that the entire civil rights regime in Canada for the last 40+ years has just been upended and is now very much in limbo.  Your fundamental rights under The Charter at this point are no longer guaranteed as a Canadian.

I want to be very clear about how dangerous that really is.  The approach being taken by the provinces is essentially "we can legislate however we like, and you have to just suck it up".  This is extremely dangerous for minority rights in Canada - especially gender and sexual minorities who are already subject to significant discrimination and marginalization.  Looking at Quebec's actions, even religious freedoms are subject to arbitrary limitations made by governments who decide that they don't like one religion's practices.  

Pick any other right you can think of, including matters of justice.  A province could decide that it is going to legislate that "anyone accused of a certain class of crime must be held in custody", and presto, there goes your right to bail.  Again, even though that is technically criminal law, the province could still invoke S33 to enforce it.  Similarly, a province could decide that a people with particular characteristics need to be held in custody "for their own good" (see Alberta's approach to addictions), and invoke S33 to prevent challenges based on "security of the person" and other individual freedoms.  

This is very much a crisis.  It might not affect your rights today, after all trans people are only a fraction of a percent of the overall population, and likewise, members of the Quebec civil service are also a relatively small fraction of the population of the province.  You probably know people who are affected by these changes directly, but because they don't affect you directly, it may seem a little abstract.  I encourage you to look through history where governments have chosen to strip people of rights for political reasons, and consider the idea that a government willing to strip one group of rights is more than willing to strip you of yours. 

If allowed to stand unchallenged, Danielle Smith and François Legault may well have ended the ordered constitution of Canada.