The United States of America is a Nation built upon the promise of religious liberty. Our Founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment. The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle. It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns. But this repackaging does little to cleanse Presidential Proclamation No. 9645 of the appearance of discrimination that the President’s words have created. Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus. That alone suffices to show that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their Establishment Clause claim. The majority holds otherwise by ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens. Because that troubling result runs contrary to the Constitution and our precedent, I dissent.
For generations, successive United States administrations have imposed their will on the countries of Latin America with callous disregard for the outcomes. They have sat astride their ideological high horses and ousted elected left-wing Latin American governments with no thought of the consequences. They have backed military coups and supported rapacious juntas in power. They have sponsored civil wars, the effects of which have left indelible wounds in several Latin American countries. They have aided and abetted authoritarian regimes in merciless crackdowns on rebellious populations.
They’ve also been influenced by the wishes of U.S. multi-national companies, even when those were unacceptably exploitative. They have foisted hardline free-market economic models on societies where the concepts are alien or where the policies reinforce the power of local aristocracies.
Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland last week joined an international chorus of governments and organizations calling for an end to a government crackdown on mass protests by political opponents in Nicaragua. About 200 unarmed civilians have been killed by security forces and paramilitary groups since the government of President Daniel Ortega launched the counterattack two months ago.
Freeland said the situation “is now posing serious risks to the security of the region.” Others are predicting the street violence could cascade into civil war. Nearby, there are only semi-functional governments in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The seeds of current turmoil in these countries were sown in the 1970s and 1980s when the U.S. backed authoritarian and military responses to social unrest. Street gangs have carved out local fiefdoms to fill the vacuum left by inadequate and predatory administrations in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The gangs have fashioned crude economies based on protection rackets, drug dealing and human trafficking.
But violence holds the whole shambles together. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have among the highest murder rates in the world. Killings in El Salvador are at a rate of 103 people among every 100,000 inhabitants. This is higher than any country except Syria, where there is an all-out civil war. The ratio is a bit better in Honduras and Guatemala, but not much.
Their goal?
To portray the PM as a trust-fund aristocrat who hasn’t got the foggiest idea of how ordinary people live. Not a man of the people, but of the beautiful people. Not a weekend cottage kind of guy, but a holiday buddy of the Aga Khan kind of guy.
The way Conservative leader Andrew Scheer raised the subject, you would think that Trudeau had taken the money straight out of the Mint to splurge on his brood’s private playground.
The reality check here would normally be to simply state the facts. Trudeau personally paid for the swing set, charging taxpayers $1,800 for its installation, as per National Capital Commission rules. Presumably when he leaves as prime minister, the swing set stays — along with the sauna (also paid for by Trudeau), and the refurbished deck and floating dock.
The Conservatives have also roasted Trudeau for the profligacy of his February trip to India. The $1.5 million price tag for this ill-fated journey, included more than $17,000 to fly in a Vancouver chef. The guy whipped up a couple of doubtlessly delicious meals for mucky-mucks attending an official reception at the Canadian High Commission.
It also cost nearly half a million dollars to staff and fly the government Airbus that took Trudeau and his retinue from Canada to India.
Trudeau may have flown in a vanity chef on his nine-day sojourn to India, but former PM Stephen Harper blew $3.9 million during two trips to the same destination, one in 2009 and a second in 2012, which totalled nine days as well.
Part of Harper’s obscene travel bill was to fly in his own armoured and bullet-proof vehicles — two Cadillacs and an SUV.
Missing in Conservative screeds alleging prime ministerial excess is the fact that Trudeau used vehicles provided by the Indian government. At $58,000, that was quite a bargain compared to Harper’s million-dollar motorcade.
Had the Liberals not risen from the grave in the three previous elections, there would have been far less accumulated animus. Had they lost in 2014, as everyone expected, they likely would have easily retained at least two or three dozen seats, not the historic low of 7 seats.
By surviving previous elections, they postponed the inevitable reckoning — setting the stage for a far harder fall in 2018.It's important to remember how the Liberal benefited from past Conservative and NDP mistakes:
In 2007, under an embattled Dalton McGuinty, the Liberals were rescued by the faith-based school funding proposed by then-Progressive Conservative leader John Tory — a political leap of faith voters wouldn’t take. In 2011, an unpopular new PC leader, Tim Hudak, could only reduce the tired Liberals to a minority.
After McGuinty bailed out, Wynne’s ascension allowed the Liberals to fight under the banner of “change” in the 2014 election — promising pension reform and a new kind of politics by the province’s first woman premier. Let’s not forget, however, that Wynne didn’t so much win the election as the Tories lost it under Hudak, while the New Democrats lost their way under Andrea Horwath.
Voters were beyond buying what Wynne was selling. It mattered little if the experts noted the Liberals had a better child-care proposal than the NDP, because Ontarians tuned them out (or perhaps we’ve learned that most voters aren’t moved by the issue, unless they happen to be on a waiting list for daycare). Even if Wynne had a winning performance in the main televised debate, she was no longer on the scorecard of most voters.
When I caught up with Mr. Schmidt this week, he was holidaying in Europe. One of the places he visited was the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, which holds the graves of hundreds of soldiers killed at Normandy. Visiting the cemetery, and thinking of the sacrifices Canadian soldiers made as part of the Allied invasion on D-Day, as well as other joint war missions with the U.S., made him incensed over Mr. Trump’s recent criticisms of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“It made me understand even more the danger of having a President who is unravelling the Western alliance as a cowardly and silently complicit Congress watches on,” Mr. Schmidt told me. “We have the U.S. President attack the Prime Minister of Canada, insult our allies, while praising [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong-un and fetishizing every other murderous tyrant, dictator and autocrat in the world.”
The picture Mr. Schmidt paints of the U.S. at the moment is an unnerving one – a President who uses mass rallies, and the repetition of lies, to incite dangerous fervour among his base; a President who dispenses propaganda through news outlets like Fox and the Sinclair Broadcast Group that he says have effectively become arms of the state; a President who believes he is the law and whatever he says is true; a President who addresses the most complex problems by affixing blame to the most vulnerable people he can affix blame to, often minorities.
“The Republican Party is a great threat to freedom and liberty and the U.S.-led global order that is quickly unravelling,” Mr. Schmidt told me. “The Democratic Party is now called to be the sentinels of liberty and freedom. It’s essential that Trumpism be repudiated, and repudiated as fast as possible.”
Everywhere you turn, politicians of a conservative bent are denouncing the climate-change measure as a pointless, economy-wrecking raid on people’s pocket books. United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney has made attacks on Alberta’s carbon tax the centerpiece of his pre-election strategy. Doug Ford just won power in Ontario after making his promise to dismantle the province’s cap-and-trade system a major component of his platform. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, also a conservative, has vowed to fight the federal carbon tax in court.
They carried out a 12-hour filibuster to draw attention to the fact the federal government won’t release any analysis of how much its national carbon tax will cost Canadians. This, despite the fact there have been plenty of studies done that have provided an answer to that very question. Studies everyone has access to.
The federal Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources estimated the cost of a $50-a-tonne carbon tax based on 2013 energy consumption levels. Their findings ranged from $603 per household in B.C. to $707 in Ontario to $1,120 in Nova Scotia. But those evaluations don’t take into account measures provincial governments can introduce to mitigate the costs, such as direct rebates or the reduction of taxes in other areas. They can pay for those breaks with the revenue raised from the carbon tax.
Ford’s big promise is jobs, especially manufacturing jobs. Ontario’s unemployment rate is 5.7 per cent, nearly the lowest it’s been in a generation, but with big disparities between urban areas and more rural ones. Manufacturing employment specifically is down about 300,000 jobs over the past 15 years. But fulfilling that promise will be difficult.
Manufacturing suffered more here in May, with 12,000 jobs in the sector disappearing from Ontario. Other industries more than made up the loss, but “employment in (manufacturing) reached a five-year peak in December 2017, and has been trending downward in 2018,” Statistics Canada reported. Alberta, Quebec, New Brunswick, British Columbia — all lost manufacturing jobs in May, with other provinces posting just tiny increases.
The hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs we retain depend a great deal on trade with the U.S., which President Donald Trump is torpedoing. The animosity only really started during the campaign, and Ford doesn’t have a real response yet, though he’s promised to stand with the federal Liberals as they marshal Canada’s response.
Ford will have to decide what sort of aid his government will give the workers whose jobs Trump has targeted, starting with steel and aluminum and potentially expanding to automakers. If the tariff tiff is temporary, that’s one thing. If it lasts a long time, help for businesses — manufacturing businesses! — that can’t survive without access to the American market could turn into corporate welfare.
Trump has lied, along with a tsunami of other fabrications, about former president Barack Obama’s birthplace, he’s made false claims about why he did not win the popular vote, he’s stated he knew nothing about payments prior to his election to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and he’s wrongly declared that the U.S. is the highest taxed nation in the world.
He has falsely claimed 72 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history; incorrectly states that he has eliminated Obamacare; and fallaciously argues that the Democrats were responsible for eliminating DACA (the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals that he terminated).
For Trump, lying has become a toxic policy for legitimizing ignorance and civic illiteracy. Not only does he relish lying repeatedly, he has also attacked the critical media, claimed journalists are enemies of the American people and argued that the media is the opposition party. His rallying cry, “fake news,” is used to dismiss any critic or criticism of his policies, however misleading, wrong or dangerous they are.
Under Trump, language operates in the service of civic violence because it infantilizes and depoliticizes the wider public, creating what Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl has called, in a different context, “the mask of nihilism.”
Trump’s endless fabrications echo the propaganda machines made famous in the fascist regimes of the 1930s. He values loyalty over integrity, and he lies in part to test the loyalty of those who both follow him and align themselves with his power.
Trump’s lying must be understood within a broader attack on the fundamentals of education and democracy itself. This is especially important at a time when the U.S. is no longer a functioning democracy and is in the presence of what sociologists Leonidas Donskis and the late Zygmunt Bauman referred to as a form “of modern barbarity.”
The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures (which officials insist aren’t cages, oh no). The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead. He has been insulting democratic allies while praising murderous dictators. And a global trade war seems increasingly likely.
Think about it. By the end of World War II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty.
But what we mainly did instead was help defeated enemies get back on their feet, establishing democratic regimes that shared our core values and became allies in protecting those values.
The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force. (There are actually some parallels with the ancient Pax Romana, but that’s another story.)
In fact, the modern world trading system was largely the brainchild not of economists or business interests, but of Cordell Hull, F.D.R.’s long-serving secretary of state, who believed that “prosperous trade among nations” was an essential element in building an “enduring peace.” So you want to think of the postwar creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as part of the same strategy that more or less simultaneously gave rise to the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO.
Already we have seen both Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron publicly signal that an EU-centric foreign policy, not one led by the U.S., is their vision of the future.
China, less adroitly, continues to attempt to build an Asian sphere of influence. Their military advances in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean have stimulated a budding South Asian strategic partnership. Nominally led by India, it is an attempting to unite all the nations of the region from Malaysia to Sri Lanka, in response to Chinese ambition. The old club of “likeminded nations” in Northern Europe are reviving their common cause on issues from climate change to the refugee crisis.
This places Canada in a new and possibly important new place. Managing the relationship with the United States will always be a priority, but unlike the past two years, it should not be the foreign policy priority.
We are alone among the advanced Western democracies not to carry any colonial baggage in our relations with China, Japan and Korea. As members of the Commonwealth, the Francophonie, the OAS and NATO, we have an uniquely wide array of organizations and alliances through which to advance Canadian interests and policy goals.
Together, with a carefully selected group of partners, it might be wise for Canada to set out an agenda that encompasses a new 21st-century set of shared policy goals, early in the New Year.
Canada is well-equipped to play a role in United Nations and global finance reform, unfreezing the paralyzed WTO and giving the G20 a new injection of political energy.
As Fen Hampson’s new examination of the foreign policy legacy of Brian Mulroney, Master of Persuasion makes clear, when a Canadian prime minister has a focused agenda and supportive partners we can make a big impact on the global stage.
Two achievements of those years little known to most Canadians may point a path for another internationally engaged prime minister. Mulroney played an important role in helping Helmut Kohl to overcome French and British resistance to German unification at a very delicate moment.
He was also one of the pivotal players in imposing the sanctions on South Africa that led to the release and election of Nelson Mandela. We are perhaps at a moment where Canada can once again play a broader strategic role on today’s global crises.
The past decade has seen the biggest financial crisis in a century, the biggest slump since the Great Depression and the slowest recovery since the second world war. Living standards have flatlined and public spending has been cut.
People are anxious, frustrated and angry. The only real surprise is that they are not angrier. That, though, may only be a matter of time, because rapid technological change is happening at a time when the global economy seems fragile and many people feel they are getting a raw deal. These are perfect conditions for an age of insecurity.
A quick glance at the report on social mobility published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development last week helps explain why populists are gaining ground. The OECD found that 25 years ago, the disposable income of the richest 10% of the population across its 34 member countries was seven times that of the poorest 10%. It is now nine times as high. Wealth inequality is even more pronounced, with the top 10% owning half the wealth and the bottom 40% just 3%.
What’s more, there is less chance of a child born into a poor family making good than there once was. The OECD found that upward mobility for people with lower educated parents tended to increase for children born between 1955 and 1975 but stagnated for those born thereafter. “Families and communities in many countries seem to be trapped on the bottom rungs of the ladder.”
It is possible for children with a disadvantaged background to get up the ladder but it is a long and painful process. In the average OECD country it would take five generations for somebody born into the poorest 10% of the population to achieve average (mean) earnings.
The three previous industrial revolutions all caused technological disruption and led to significant job replacement. They also led to income inequality, because those with the greatest skills were able to stay one step ahead of the machine. Workers did not always benefit fully or immediately from the pick-up in productivity associated with periods of technological change, which were often long as well as difficult for those affected.
But institutions developed to ensure that the fruits of growth were shared. These took many forms: compulsory schooling, the spread of higher education, the development of central banks, the emergence of credit unions and friendly societies, the arrival of trade unions to represent workers, and the creation and expansion of the welfare state during the 20th century.
We already knew that Donald Trump has a pathological infatuation for dictatorships and the authoritarian leaders who rule them, and a loathing of everything that genuine democracy entails.
1. Kim is a much better negotiator than Trump:
The overwhelming consensus of nuclear experts is that Kim Jong Un clearly outmanoeuvred the U.S. president. The North Korean leader made fewer concessions than in previous negotiations with the U.S., dating back to the 1990s. He promised only to “work towards the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” – but with no timetable or details. In exchange, not only did he achieve a unique one-on-one summit with the American president — an obsession of the Kim dynasty for decades — but Trump also agreed to Kim’s request that the U.S. cancel joint military exercises with South Korea.
2. Trump stands in awe of North Korea:
Only six months ago, Trump had described North Korea in these terms: “The horror of life in North Korea is complete … Leaders imprison their people under the banner of tyranny, fascism and oppression.” Yet, after the Singapore summit, Trump told the Voice of America that he had this message for North Koreans: “I think you have somebody that has a great feeling for them. He wants to do right by them and we got along really well.”
3. Trump doesn't care about international relations. Everything he does is done for domestic reasons:
Trump made this absurd claim: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office …” But he showed why this is all about the mid-term congressional elections five months from now: “Honestly, I think (Kim) is going to do these things. I may be wrong. I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong’. I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of excuse.”
4. The Iran Deal -- which Trump just walked away from -- was a much better deal than the one Trump got from Kim:
North Korea has a developed and sophisticated nuclear program, hidden in underground bunkers throughout the country. Nuclear experts estimate it would take years for the process to happen. None of that was reflected in the skimpy two-page Singapore statement written by Trump and Kim. In contrast, nuclear experts point to the detailed, 159-page Iran nuclear deal as a potential model for any North Korea nuclear breakthrough. Of course, this is the deal that Trump has attacked as “the worst deal ever … defective at its core.”
5. The G7 meeting in Quebec was a disaster. Through insults and bullying, Trump injected chaos into the western alliance that he seems to loathe so much.
Coming as it did immediately before his lovefest with Kim Jong Un, the uproar revealed the enormous challenge currently being faced by 21st-century democracies in the Era of Trump. That may be the ultimate warning bell from this historic week.
Harris’s own public career began on school boards and he’d been a teacher himself. This disposed him negatively, not positively. For minister, he pointedly named a Grade 11 dropout, John Snobelen, who immediately told his staff to fabricate a “useful crisis” in public education to justify drastic attacks on it.
That included grabbing control of funding from local boards, undermining the public system with tax breaks for parents who put their kids in private schools, and bringing in standardized tests, which threatened to crowd out everything else done in classrooms. Teachers and their unions became Harris’s main opposition and everyone got used to frequent, sometimes illegal strikes.
Trump placed his own ignoramus, Betsy de Vos, in charge there. Her life’s mission has been dumping public schools for private, so-called charter schools. Trump himself said, “I love the poorly educated.” That’s not the same as the uneducated, which could result from neglect. “Poorly” implies deliberate bad teaching. Keep them stupid.
The main pushback has come from U.S. teachers and their unions, often in “red,” Trump-voting states. It’s been breathtaking. Teachers have fought not just for wages, which are often far below average. They’ve demanded that the funding come from taxes on the rich or energy corporations, whose taxes had been reduced. They’ve allied with parents, who generally seem to get it since the aim is to bolster not just schools, but overall social well-being.
This week, [Jared] Kushner’s new financial disclosure records were released, showing the considerable rise in his assets. Their value ranged between $179m and $735m, up from a range of $137m to $609m the previous year. (White House officials are required to report their assets in broad ranges). For Jared, it was a very good year, indeed.
Just last month came the happy news that Ivanka’s brand had won seven additional Chinese patents for items ranging from cushions to books. The new patents were issued at the same time that her father vowed to save ZTE, a major Chinese telecommunications company, from going bust – a rare and surprising move for a president who is a foreign trade hardliner. The New York Times noted: “Even as Mr Trump contends with Beijing on issues like security and trade, his family and the company that bears his name are trying to make money off their brand in China’s flush and potentially promising market.”
Then there is the president himself. His Trump International Hotel is doing brisk business, its lobby always full of White House favour-seekers, its pricey rooms often filled with industry executives and lobbyists. The hotel is siphoning business from other local hotels and convention centres, according to the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland, which have both filed lawsuits. They charge that Trump’s profits from the hotel violate the US constitution’s anti-corruption clauses. The Justice department, unsurprisingly, has defended the president’s continuing role as a hotelier, but a federal judge on Monday sharply criticised the department’s legal reasoning. The case is probably heading for the US supreme court.
David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, recently summed up the “Trumpian world-view” writing, “Trump takes every relationship that has historically been based on affection, loyalty, trust and reciprocity and turned it into a relationship based on competition, self-interest, suspicion and efforts to establish dominance.”
There was a time when reformers looked elsewhere. They said the real test for a progressive government is how it treats the poor. Winning an election by appeals to the middle class is one thing. But continuing with that emphasis while almost five million Canadians are in poverty is a betrayal of the democratic goal of equality. It’s a particular betrayal of poor Canadian children who have been promised equality of opportunity.
Back in 1989, three federal parties worked together to propose and pass a motion that I, as the leader of the federal NDP, moved to eliminate child poverty within a decade. We all thought that, with the right mix of policies at both the federal and provincial levels, this timeline was possible.
The government now has a chance to change directions. It is due to announce a Canadian poverty-reduction strategy within weeks. We should demand a pan-Canadian strategy to address the needs of the millions of Canadians living in poverty. And, unlike what happened in 1989, this should include specific benchmarks and timelines for child poverty so that subsequent governments can be held accountable. There should be an annual report to Parliament on its implementation.
The elements of a national strategy are clear. The attack on poverty, and eradication of child poverty specifically, must include concrete action on affordable housing, pharmacare, child care, tax reform, the minimum wage and precarious work.
Canadians see the Americans as cousins. We love the same sports: Canadians are crazy about baseball and basketball, and our beloved game of hockey is played all over the US. For generations, Canadians have moved south in search of jobs, education and fame. A large part of Canada heads for Florida, California and Hawaii in the winter to get away from the snow. When the US endures disasters we sympathize. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 Canadians opened their airfields and homes to the thousands of American planes and travellers who were stranded here. (In what seems to have been a vain attempt to win over the Trumps, Justin Trudeau took Ivanka and Jared to a cheery, feelgood musical about what happened when a plane bound for New York found itself in a remote Newfoundland village.)
In the past few months increasingly testy growls have been emanating from the White House. Canada has a huge trade surplus with the US. (No matter that it doesn’t.) Canada cheats. Canada is a security threat which is why the US has to put tariffs in Canadian steel and aluminium. The Canadian government has politely disagreed. And Trudeau, in his now notorious press conference as Air Force One was heading to Singapore, repeated what he had already said: it is insulting to impose what are probably illegal tariffs on specious grounds.
It is Trump’s reaction that should have us all extremely worried – Americans included. Their country is very powerful but power does not last for ever and the US is facing challenges, from China in particular. The US needs friends and partners. So when Trump calls the chief minister of one of his country’s most reliable friends “very dishonest and weak” he is clearly not putting the interests of the United States first. His sorry advisers have piled in, so eager to please the boss that they don’t care what further damage they do. Peter Navarro, the self-proclaimed expert on China who doesn’t speak much Chinese, talks about a stab in the back. (Where have we heard that one before?) Larry Kudlow – the economist with the record of wrong predictions and the one who used to oppose Trump’s tariffs – exclaims that disagreeing with Trump on the eve of the summit with Kim Jong-un is undermining. “Kim must not see American weakness.” So that is now the role of American allies – to shower praise on the Great Leader just as his cabinet did in that shameful televised meeting last June.
There has never been a disaster like the G7 meeting that just took place. It could herald the beginning of a trade war, maybe even the collapse of the Western alliance. At the very least it will damage America’s reputation as a reliable ally for decades to come; even if Trump eventually departs the scene in disgrace, the fact that someone like him could come to power in the first place will always be in the back of everyone’s mind.
Trump demanded that the other G7 members remove their “ridiculous and unacceptable” tariffs on U.S. goods – which would be hard for them to do, because their actual tariff rates are very low. The European Union, for example, levies an average tariff of only three percent on US goods. Who says so? The U.S. government’s own guide to exporters.
True, there are some particular sectors where each country imposes special barriers to trade. Yes, Canada imposes high tariffs on certain dairy products. But it’s hard to make the case that these special cases are any worse than, say, the 25 percent tariff the U.S. still imposes on light trucks. The overall picture is that all of the G7 members have very open markets.
So what on earth was Trump even talking about? His trade advisers have repeatedly claimed that value-added taxes, which play an important role in many countries, are a form of unfair trade protection. But this is sheer ignorance: VATs don’t convey any competitive advantage – they’re just a way of implementing a sales tax — which is why they’re legal under the WTO. And the rest of the world isn’t going to change its whole fiscal system because the U.S. president chooses to listen to advisers who don’t understand anything.
The ironic part of the past Ontario campaign, as several commentators pointed out, is that all the leaders were contending with ghosts: Kathleen Wynne with the memory of her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty; NDP Leader Andrea Horwath with the old Bob Rae government; and Doug Ford, the new premier-to-be, with memories of the old Mike Harris Conservative years at Queen’s Park.
Attacks along these lines presumed a lot about the long-term memory of voters in the era of short-termism. When last week is a distant memory, who votes based on what happened a couple of decades ago in Ontario?
Consider this: the last time that a non-Liberal government was in charge at Queen’s Park, there was no such thing as Facebook (launched in 2004); YouTube (2005); Twitter (2006) or even, yes, iPhones, first unveiled by Steve Jobs in 2007.
In the fall of 2003, when Liberals first took power in Ontario, Stephen Harper hadn’t yet united the right-wing federal parties in Canada and Donald Trump, a New York real-estate magnate, was still months away from the debut of a reality-TV show called The Apprentice.
In just under 600 days in office, Trump has brazened on through multiple, major scandals and controversy; any one of which might have toppled a predecessor.
Trump gambles, often correctly, that no one will remember what he said previously, so he doesn’t bother much with explanations about when he changes his mind or states the opposite position later.
It’s called populism, as Trump practises it, but it often hinges on a dim view of the populace — particularly with regard to the public attention span. The better description for this brand of politics might be “short-termism.”
Western trade partners have attempted to reason with Trump’s demands, but the problem is that the basis for his beliefs and actions is entirely fantastical. If your neighbor is irate that you let your dog run loose in his yard, you can pacify him. If he’s irate that you are reading his thoughts through his tinfoil hat, there’s nothing you can do except disengage. And that is what they are doing. French president Emmanuel Macron threatened to sign a six-country agreement omitting the U.S. altogether. Canadian prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed “to defend our industries and our workers” and “show the U.S. president that his unacceptable actions are hurting his own citizens.”
But trade is merely a symptom of a larger rearrangement of American alienation from its partners. The West has attempted to prevail upon Trump to retain, in some form, a series of agreements he inherited: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate agreement, and the Iran nuclear deal. In every instance the negotiations foundered on Trump’s allergy to compromise and immunity to reason. You can’t negotiate a climate plan with a person who considers climate science a Chinese hoax any more than you can negotiate a trade deal with somebody who believes Canada must be punished for the War of 1812.
One by one, Trump’s personal relationship with the leader of each major U.S. ally has been fatally poisoned. Angela Merkel, whom Trump had repeatedly taunted and likened to Hillary Clinton during his campaign, was the first major leader to give up on Trump. “It’s difficult to overstate just how enraged Germany is about Trump,” reports Matthew Karnitschnig. Trump’s allies tell one British newspaper he “has grown frustrated with Theresa May’s ‘school mistress’ tone.” (May publicly corrected Trump’s circulation of fake videos blaming Muslims for violence.) Trump “has griped periodically both about German Chancellor Angela Merkel — largely because they disagree on many issues and have had an uneasy rapport — as well as British Prime Minister Theresa May, whom he sees as too politically correct,” his advisers tell the Washington Post.
Macron, who has bent over backwards to flatter and placate Trump, has found his efforts unrewarded. A recent phone call between the two was “terrible,” a source tells CNN. “Macron thought he would be able to speak his mind, based on the relationship. But Trump can’t handle being criticized like that.”
Ford’s campaign has been a well-oiled hot mess, despite the machinations on Facebook of the right-wing activist group Ontario Proud. From being on the receiving end of complaints of violating Ontario’s campaign finance rules to appointing candidates rather than holding contested nominations, Ford has shown himself to have all the instincts of his deceased brother — and a few of Donald Trump’s.
Ford also made wild promises to wipe out Ontario’s deficit coupled with enormous tax cuts. How do you pay down the deficit with less revenue? How do you pay for the tax cuts themselves, unless by the tried and true way of cutting services?
Ford’s costings for his promises are about as reliable as a five-year-old’s first go at an abacus.
This year’s conclave, opening on Friday, is being referred to as the G6 plus one, or the G7 minus one. It promises to be a showdown between the US president and everyone else.
Usually by this point the sherpas, diplomats who prepare for the summit, are working on the punctuation in the final communique. This time no one knows whether there is enough common language to put together any kind of joint statement by the meeting’s end on Saturday.
On Wednesday, Trudeau said he was preparing for heated exchanges at the summit. “We know there will certainly be frank and at times difficult conversations around the G7 table,” he told reporters. “Particularly with the American president on trade, on tariffs.”
The last serious discord among the G7 was over George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But the rift this time is sharper and broader. Even the UK is not siding with Washington. Trump is challenging the norms of western cohesion and rules-based trade that have been in place since the aftermath of the second world war.
Perhaps the rediscovery of our humanity, and the potential of the human spirit which we have read about in legends of older civilizations, or in accounts of solitary mystics, or in tales of science fiction writers - perhaps this will constitute the true revolution of the future. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.
Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?"
I dream things that never were and say, "Why not?"
The widow and children of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford are suing his brother Doug Ford, alleging he has deprived them of millions of dollars, including shares in the family business and a life insurance policy left behind to support his family.
In a $16.5-million lawsuit filed Friday in Superior Court, Renata Ford also alleges that former brother-in-law Doug Ford is a “negligent” business manager whose decisions have led to a steady decrease in the value of the Ford company, Deco Labels. Despite setting his sights on a political career, Doug has continued to receive “extravagant compensation,” even though Deco is losing money, Renata claims in her court filings.
when Rob died, she was left with Rob’s shares in Deco. Renata said soon after, brother Doug approached her and suggested they settle the estate without involving lawyers.
“Let’s get rid of the lawyers and settle this on our own,” Renata quotes Doug in her statement of claim. “They will only steal your money. You’re going to lose everything in your savings.”
Renata states in her court filing that she did not follow Doug’s suggestions, nor did she agree to his suggestion that she sell her late husband’s shares to Doug. She says she tried many times to get an accounting of Rob’s estate, but she remains in the dark.
[She claims] that she recently learned that Doug sold Randy Rob’s shares in Deco for a nominal cost of $1. She said she was then provided (the suit does not say who provided it) with a “third party valuation” of the shares and was told they had a “fair market value of zero.”
[She also claims] that when their father ran it, the company was extremely successful, with a market value of $10 million and an “investment portfolio” between $15 million and $20 million.
She alleges that the company has steadily lost value under Doug and Randy, who have been the top officers and directors of Deco since their father died.
“They have so negligently and improperly mismanaged (the business affairs of Deco) as to destroy their value,” she alleges.
According to the statement of claim, financial statements of Deco show Deco Toronto has experienced total losses of about $5 million between 2010 and 2017. Prior to Doug and Randy taking over it was profitable, she said.
King George III is in the Oval Office and he’s not playing cards. You know, Old Georgie? The mad 18th century British monarch famous for his blue urine and losing America on his watch.
Trump’s latest insanity is to put a ruinous tariff on steel and aluminum imports — 25 percent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminum. And not just on anyone, but on Canada, Mexico and the European Union. America’s friends, allies and key trading partners — countries Ronald Reagan used to call “kin.”
Next up? The Chinese.
The renowned Columbia University professor essentially accused Trump of exhibiting the kind of erratic behaviour that usually calls for serious quiet time and counselling.
It is said of King George III that he talked incessantly until he foamed at the mouth. So far, Trump just speaks out of both sides of his mouth, in a language few English speakers are familiar with. Some days, it sounds a lot like mania.
Foreign companies sanctioned one day, embraced the next, traduced the day after that.
Trade wars announced, called off, possibly back on again, and finally imposed — but for who knows how long.
Summits with dictators agreed to, cancelled, revisited, and re-announced.
It’s clear the Liberals can’t recover enough to win a majority of the legislature’s seats, and given the concentration of the NDP vote in particular areas, it would also be surprising as well if the New Democrats won a majority. (Of course, we were surprised in 1990 when the NDP captured a solid majority with under 39 per cent of the popular vote.) If there is a majority government, it seems most likely it will be Conservative.
The possibilities for minority government are much more numerous. Suppose the PCs win a plurality of seats, but not a majority. They would then have a legitimate claim that Ontario’s lieutenant governor should invite Ford to form a government.
Wynne will still be premier until a new government is sworn in. If her party was to make a late surge and hold on to some of its seats, she could ask that the legislature be called into session and could attempt to make an agreement with the NDP (or less likely, the PCs) to hold onto office.
If she winds up in third place in terms of seats however, her claim to continued power would be significantly weaker. The closest (though not perfect) analogy is found after the election of 1985 when the PCs, having lost a majority, asked for the legislature’s confidence in the hopes of continuing to govern.
They had managed minority governments from 1975 to 1981, and might have hoped to do so again. However, David Peterson’s Liberals and Bob Rae’s NDP agreed to withhold confidence from the PC government.
They settled on an accord by which the NDP would agree not to cast non-confidence votes against the Liberal government, headed by Peterson, for two years in return for the Liberals’ agreeing to pursue an agenda on which the two parties could agree.
With a border of 5,525 miles, the US and Canada share the world’s longest unmilitarized border and also boast the largest balanced bilateral trade relationship; Canada-US annual trade exceeds $630bn in goods and services. Thirty-five US states have Canada as their largest export market and most of the remaining have it as their number two. Canadian soldiers have sacrificed their lives right next to American soldiers in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Kosovo, Korea, and both world wars. After September 11, the people of Gander, Newfoundland, opened their homes to thousands of travelers stranded when we closed US airspace. This heart-warming story is told in, Come From Away, the hit Broadway show. We jointly protect North America through Norad and together protect Europe through Nato. Canada is our neighbor and friend, and our relationship demonstrates how diplomatic and economic friendship provides strong geopolitical stability.
There isn’t a relationship in the world more important to the United States than Canada, but Washington’s recent behavior is cause for alarm.
Trump has persistently tested this friendship over the past year and a half. The trouble started when we withdrew from and signaled to Canada that the administration was willing not only to sacrifice our commitments but also our environmental future for empty political points.
Our bilateral relationship has been further strained by the travel bans, the Daca decision (over which a dangerous and cruel wave of uncertainty still looms), and the erratic behavior of customs agents. Our reckless approach to immigration has caused a number of refugees to flee the United States to Canada, putting a strain on their resources from coast to coast, but especially in Quebec.
The president is prioritizing political tactics over economic strategy, threatening our friendship and potentially millions of American jobs just because he won’t do the hard work that the office of the presidency requires. The administration is using Nafta as a scapegoat for the real problem of jobs lost through technological advancements.
Both Macron and Trudeau voiced especially harsh criticism of Trump on Thursday, even though other leaders who have been more at odds with Trump remained somewhat less vocal. Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May sent their spokespeople to condemn the tariffs, rather than make a personal statement.
Meanwhile, Macron ominously warned that “economic nationalism leads to war. This is exactly what happened in the 1930s.” His World War II reference could hardly have been less veiled. Trudeau similarly referred to dark times of history in his response, saying: “These tariffs are an affront to the long-standing security partnership between Canada and the United States, and in particular, to the thousands of Canadians who have fought and died alongside American comrades-in-arms.”
At a summit in mid-May, European Council President Donald Tusk. . . lashed out at Trump over his policies regarding Iran, Gaza, trade tariffs and North Korea.
“Looking at the latest decisions of Donald Trump, someone could even think: With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Tusk said. “But, frankly speaking, Europe should be grateful by President Trump. Because, thanks to him, we got rid of all the illusions. He has made us realize that if you need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of your arm.”
At least Trudeau already appears to be preparing for a time after him. “This is not about the American people,” he wrote on Twitter Thursday. “We have to believe that at some point their common sense will prevail. But we see no sign of that in this action today by the US administration.”
