Poilievre's Future

                                                     http://primepolitics.org/

The last federal election cost $443 million. But we shouldn't, Susan Delacourt writes, get too exorcised about the cost:

That’s about $5 more per person than the cost of the 2011 election, but last year’s 78-day campaign was more than twice the length of the last one. It was also more of a box office success: nearly three million more voters than in the 2011 election. 

All of those new voters means that democracy won the last election:

The political parties of all stripes are saying — with some justification — that the increase in turnout is a result of their increased sophistication in getting out the vote with data and analytics. But while that is no doubt true, it can’t be the only explanation. Nor is it enough to say that Canadians were motivated to vote last year because it was a “change” election.

Big data and big change aside, Elections Canada itself probably played a major role in upping voter turnout. And that is a particularly sweet ending to a decade in which this institution was demonized and demoralized by the government in power. 

And given how the Conservatives tried to hamstring the people who Stephen Harper once referred to as "those jackasses at Elections Canada," that number is remarkable:

Recall, for instance, how former democratic reform minister Pierre Poilievre introduced the Fair Elections Act in 2014, and how he defended the measures reining in Elections Canada’s authority to promote voter participation.

“Clearly the public advertising and outreach campaigns of Elections Canada have not worked,” Poilievre said in a CBC interview after introducing the legislation. “Since they came into effect, voter turnout has actually plummeted.”

Poilievre may have wished that voter participation would plummet. But, in the future, Mr. Poilievre should be careful what he wishes for:

Last fall, Elections Canada went ahead and gamely tried to get the vote out anyway, especially among people who hadn’t shown a big interest in voting in previous elections — youth and aboriginal people in particular.

Elections Canada set up 71 “satellite offices” for voting at select university and college campuses, YMCAs and friendship centres, and gathered more than 70,000 votes this way, most at the campus locations. Another pilot project in hospitals produced 22,000 votes from people in acute or long-term care.

Elections Canada also introduced an online voter registration service, which 1.7 million people used to see if they were on the voters list. More than 300,000 people in Canada got onto the voters’ list through this new online route, according to the report issued last week. As well, voters were permitted for the first time in 2015 to apply online to cast a special ballot if they were unable to vote at advance or election-day polls. The number of people voting this way more than doubled over the 2011 special ballot figures.

Elections Canada did its job despite Conservative attempts to shut it down. One wonders what lies ahead for Pierre Poilievre.

The Fog Has Lifted

                                                   http://www.gogobot.com/

Robin Sears wrote this week that, on the morning after the election, the atmosphere in Ottawa had changed:

A senior First Nations leader, returning to the capital by train from working hard for the ouster of the Hun, greets an old colleague with nothing more than an overly fierce handshake and a penetrating smile that lasts several seconds longer than it would have two days earlier. A member of the permanent establishment greets a colleague in its seat of power, the bar of the Rideau Club, with a raised glass, no one having to say or guess to whom or what is his salute.

Sadly, for the hundreds of now unemployed young Tory staffers and their bosses, the return of Canada to normalcy — a Liberal government madly peddling back to the centre having campaigned on hazy promises to deliver more progressive Elysian fields — will soon erase their thousands of hours and a decade of effort to imprint a darker vision on the country.

And Andrew Coyne writes this morning that -- when you look at the numbers --  it's clear that things are now very different across the country:

Indeed, across much of the country we have some of the most contestable politics in memory. Where in the United States redistricting has led to an increase in safe Republican and safe Democratic seats, or indeed states, polarizing the country on regional and ideological lines, the opposite has occurred here.

The number of ridings won by a margin of less than five per cent has increased from 42 in 2008 to 51 in 2011 to 68 in 2015. What is more, in 35 ridings, the third-place party finished within 10 per cent of the winner. In only 16 ridings was that true in 2011; in 2008, five. That’s competitive.

Broad national parties. The largest provinces riven by three- and even four-way fights. Relatively fewer safe seats. And, not coincidentally, the highest turnout in more than 20 years. There’s lots of good news in this election: for democracy, and for Canada.

The fog has lifted.

Eventually They Figure Things Out

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Monday's election was historic. But the corporate media and its scribes are already trying to re-write history. Michael Harris writes:

Nor is there much more of the historian in Paul Wells’ touching but mostly irrelevant comment that he still likes Harper, whom he believes will be seen by history as an estimable prime minister, maybe even a great one.

And John Ibbitson, who saw Harper's 2011 election  as a Big Shift, still hasn't grasped what happened on Monday:

It was curious to see another author and journalist, John Ibbitson, opining as an ‘expert’ about the reasons for Harper’s political demise. For one thing, his most recent book on the Conservative leader was more of a peck on the cheek than an investigation — a few gentle scratches, but mostly purring.

For another, Ibbitson is the government-friendly columnist from what is left of the Globe and Mail, that rabbit hole of a newspaper that believes you can endorse a party without its leader. In his previous book, Ibbitson predicted a “seismic shift” in Canadian politics and culture, a Tory dynasty stretching out to the crack of doom.

And, as Andrew Coyne can testify, when push comes to shove, The National Post has no room for dissenting opinions.

It's important to note that, despite the support of Canada's publishing moguls, Stephen Harper finally had his rendezvous with the people -- who knew who he was and decided they had had enough of him:

It comes down to this: you can’t have a dictatorial liar running a democracy for the benefit of his corporate buddies and expect a country like Canada to tolerate it forever. Canadians ultimately drop the gloves when they come face to face with tyrants — and kick the stuffing out of him.

That is what really happened here. The country really did embrace the “better angels of our nature”, to borrow the phrase Trudeau borrowed from Lincoln. It was more disgusted by than afraid of Stephen Harper.

It didn’t appreciate his lies about what he was doing and why, his degradation of Canadian foreign policy for domestic political gain, his toxic manipulation of information that belonged to everyone, and his vicious mistreatment of anyone who dared to tell him that the sun didn’t orbit around … him.

The people are not always right -- the first time around. But, eventually, they figure things out.

We Await The Future

                                                    http://www.abc.net.au/

The day after Justin Trudeau delivered his father's eulogy, Stephen Harper -- then head of the National Citizens Coalition -- wrote a scathing assessment of Pierre Elliott Trudeau:

Mr. Trudeau embraced the fashionable causes of his time, with variable enthusiasm and differing results. But he was also a member of the “greatest generation,” the one that defeated the Nazis in war and resolutely stood down the Soviets in the decades that followed. In those battles however, the ones that truly defined his century, Mr. Trudeau took a pass. And so it is to the ideals of the greatest generation, and not those of Pierre Trudeau, that Canada should properly dedicate itself.

Harper made no mention of the October Crisis, the repatriation of the constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Instead he wrote that near the end of Trudeau's life:

I came face to face with a living legend, someone who had provoked both the loves and hatreds of my political passion, all in the form of a tired out, little old man.

The boy who used to be the president of his high school's Liberal Club came to hate Trudeau and everything he stood for. We can leave his reasons to the psychoanalysts. But it will surely rank as one of history's great ironies that the man who despised Pierre Trudeau was soundly sent packing last night by Trudeau's son.

Andrew Coyne writes this morning that what Justin Trudeau accomplished last night is unprecedented in Canadian history:

To have come back from 19 per cent of the popular vote in 2011 to almost 40 per cent, and from 34 seats — 11 per cent of the total — to 184, a majority: there’s just no precedent for it. To have done so, what is more, having started the campaign well back in third, against more experienced and better-financed opponents, tells you just how well the Liberal campaign went — and how well Trudeau performed. 

Mr. Trudeau will have a full plate. We await the future. 

 

An Historic Election

                                                  https://www.flickr.com/

It's been a long time coming, this last day of the election campaign. And it's been a campaign that covered a lot of ground -- some good soil and some swamp. Tim Harper writes:

We went from debating budget bottom lines to a discussion which cut to the core of what it meant to be Canadian — the value of our citizenship, our history of welcoming the world’s neediest, our treatment of our neighbours, our place in the world, our accommodation to others with different customs and garb.

Some of the debate soared. Some of it headed straight to the ditch, sullied by a welt of lies and exaggerations meant to sow fear and appeal to our innermost darkness rather than challenging us to rise above the distractions and seek to become better Canadians.

Niqabs, snitch lines and revoked citizenships really had no place in this campaign, but there they were, alongside brothels in the suburbs and “marijuana stores” beside schools.

Early on, it appeared we were heading for history with the potential election of Mulcair and the first NDP government in this country.

What ever happens, today will make history:

If he wins, Trudeau will become the first offspring of a prime minister to win the job himself and he will have steered a party from third place at the dissolution of Parliament to victory for the first time in Canadian history.

If he loses Monday, Harper will be the first prime minister in 36 years to go from a majority of his making to conceding defeat on election night. The last? Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, in his 1979 defeat at the hands of Progressive Conservative Joe Clark.

Should Harper prevail, he will become the first Canadian leader to win four consecutive elections in more than a century, since Sir Wilfrid Laurier. He would have done it by defeating four different Liberal leaders. 

This has been no ordinary election. It has made history.

There Is A Lot Of Work To Be Done

                                    https://www.chicagosummeroflearning.org/

It's beginning to look like -- after the smoke has cleared -- we will have a new and different government. Murray Dobbins writes that will mean we will get some kind of proportional representation. But he warns that:

The desperate need for proportional representation has to some extent distracted us from just how inadequate and unresponsive the rest of the system is. It has taken the likes of Harper to actually push the other parties to suddenly call for change when they have for decades supported first-past-the-post because executive dictatorship is an attractive form of governance to those who run political parties.

Given this history, it is hard not to conclude that political parties themselves are the biggest barrier to genuine, participatory democracy. Parties have, with rare and short-lived exceptions, always acted in their own interests whenever faced with a choice between that goal and working for the country. That has always been true of the two Bay Street parties and now that the NDP has drunk the we-can-win Kool-aid, they join their ranks, adopting a strategy that replaces principle with opportunism.

The current system encourages the reproduction of political clones:

If the current election-machine NDP wants to win an election it will have to do so as a liberal party that has reached an accommodation with globalization and finance capital. Little by little the adoption of Liberal and Conservative political strategy has corrupted what remained of a social democratic party. By the time they win an election on this basis they will be completely indistinguishable from the Liberals they are determined to replace.

The Liberal/Conservative mode of doing politics doesn't suit a political party that wants to change the political culture. Such a party cannot achieve change unless it becomes an integral part of the community whose values it claims to share. This is why the NDP consistently underestimates the desire for change in its support base and miscalculates its response to the politics of opportunism. If the NDP is confused about whether it’s a party of change or just another competitor on the field, it’s no wonder its potential supporters are confused.

After this election, Canadians will have to address the issue of civic literacy. In the end, the change we seek has to come from us:

If you truly want change, who will be the agent of that change? In other words, it is not so much what is to be done (make your own list) but what model of organizing can begin to accomplish it. Change doesn't just happen because millions of people say they want it. Post-election, this will be the critical task of all progressives -- take what we know is possible and use it to rebuild community, reclaim the commons and build a broad-based social movement with the power to challenge the status quo.

There is a lot of work to be done.

A Political Willy Loman

                                                       http://pdxretro.com/

For the last ten years, Stephen Harper has been trying to remake Canada in his own image. Alan Freeman writes that, despite his Herculean efforts, Harper has failed. Want the proof? Consider his Heritage  Department's attempt to identify the ten most influential Canadians:

Topping the list of Canadian icons was none other than the Antichrist himself, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Number 2 was Terry Fox. Tommy Douglas, the socialist father of medicare, came in third. Lester Pearson, father of the wishy-washy UN peacekeeping tradition, was fourth. Environmentalist David Suzuki and the late NDP leader Jack Layton came in sixth and seventh, respectively.

The only Tory on the list was Sir John A. Macdonald, who punched in at No. 8. Wayne Gretzky, whose ill-timed entry into the current election campaign at a Harper rally makes him an honorary Conservative, was ninth.

When asked what national accomplishments made them most proud, the respondents’ answers were every bit as depressing from a Harperite point of view: medicare, peacekeeping and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Nobody seemed to care about the War of 1812, income-splitting or the founding of the Tim Hortons donut chain.

Heritage Minister Shelley Glover dismissed the whole exercise, saying that "the government 'will not be telling people whom they ought to be celebrating' — news to those of us in Ottawa still getting used to those frequent CF-18 flypasts."


Yesterday, the Globe and Mail endorsed the Conservatives, but not Harper. Word on the campaign trail is that, even those who plan to vote Conservative are saying they don't like Harper:

As hard as Harper tried, this country hasn’t really come around to his way of thinking — something the ‘experts’ had been telling us for years was bound to happen. The core Conservative base remains somewhere around one-third of the population, having hit a high-water mark of 39.6 per cent for the Tories in the 2011 election.

More than 60 per cent of Canadians have always rejected Harper’s vision for the country. Conservatives have been virtually wiped off the electoral map in the provinces, with the exception of Newfoundland/Labrador and Saskatchewan, where Tory-like Brad Wall is premier.

“The values and attitudes of ordinary Canadians have not shifted notably,” said pollster Michael Adams, who has done extensive work on social and political views in Canada and the U.S. On foreign policy, Canadians still value the Pearsonian concept of peacekeeping as much as they honour the military legacy of Vimy Ridge. At home, Canadians don’t want to see their federal government dismantled and they still favour carbon taxes to fight climate change.

Who knows what Monday's outcome will be? But it's beginning to look like Stephen Harper is the Willy Loman of Canadian politics -- someone with big dreams, who eventually committed political suicide.

The Woods Are Burning

                                        

                                              http://www.tntmagazine.com/


There's always a fire to put out. Justin Trudeau is dealing with the fallout from the news that his campaign co-chair has been consulting for Trans Canada Corp. But, if you think that's a big fire Michael Harris writes, it's nothing like the Harper campaign -- which is a conflagration. The cause of the blaze is Harper's alliance with Rob and Doug Ford:

The idea of standing in front of a campaign rally in a half-filled room with Rob and Doug Ford in the front row — glaring with their tiny, mad eyes — would be enough to scare the pants off a hitman.

And yet, that’s the humiliating scene to which Stephen Harper submitted himself like a lamb in Etobicoke earlier in the week. On Saturday, the Fords will do it to him again when they host the Conservative leader at another Toronto party rally. The Conservative campaign has now passed beyond putting out fires, into the realm of flat-out, hair-pulling desperation.

In a new ads -- targeted at immigrant communities -- Harper claims that Trudeau is soft on weed and a mad eyed advocate for brothels:

In a new series of Conservative party ads, translated into Chinese and Punjabi and running in small newspapers and flyers, Harper claims that Justin Trudeau’s values boil down to: community brothels, bubblegum and doobies waiting for the kids in every corner store and safe injection sites for drug addicts. So, yeah. Pretty much the end of civilization as we know it.

And his antidote to Trudeau is the Fords?  Talk about bumbling irony:

Both brothers have been linked to the drug trade — the Globe and Mail reported that Doug sold hash in the 1980s. Rob’s admission of drug use happened under duress, of course, since by the time he owned up to it, everybody on the planet with a phone had seen the video of him with his Happy Pipe. He was an out-of-control substance abuser — just the kind of foil you want for a libertine like Justin, right?

The woods are burning all around Harper -- and he's desperate.

For Who And What He Is

                                               http://www.people-results.com/

Carol Goar has an interesting column in today's Toronto Star. She writes that this election has held a mirror up to us and forced us to face some hard truths -- some good, some not so good. Among the not so good is the notion that our fabled tolerance is a myth:

If the polls are right, eight out of 10 Canadians find it “offensive” that a few Muslim women wear niqabs when they take the oath of citizenship. Have these people ever attended a citizenship ceremony? Have they ever spoken to a woman who wears a niqab? Are they affected in any way by what Muslim women wear?

Casting judgment on minorities has somehow become acceptable in Canada. How did we let this happen? Why aren’t we standing up to the perpetrators?

On the other hand: 

Our humanitarian instincts remain strong. We entreated Ottawa to welcome Syrian refugees the same way Canada took in 37,000 Hungarian refugees in the 1950s, 7,000 Ugandan refugees in the 1970s and 60,000 Vietnamese refugees in the 1980s. When the governing Conservatives did not rise to the challenge, we rolled up our own sleeves and worked through our churches, community groups, service clubs, schools and universities to sponsor refugees privately. 

And, when our federal government refuses to recognize our humanitarian instincts, we act on our own:

We’re becoming a do-it-yourself nation. We organize, fundraise and volunteer to sponsor refugees, protect the environment and provide relief to people in natural and man-made disasters. We no longer look to Ottawa as the guardian of medicare. It’s up to us. We no longer expect our national government to set pan-Canadian standards or build public consensus. We do what we can ourselves. 

How will this effect Monday's vote count? It's hard to say. But it appears that, while Stephen Harper has changed this country for the worse, we have seen the man for who and what he is. 

It's No Wonder

                                                        http://thelapine.ca/

I have suggested on several occasions that the ghost which lurks in Stephen Harper's closet is Richard Nixon. But Marie Marguerite Sabongui, writing in The Guardian, suggests that the ghost which haunts Harperland is of more recent vintage -- George W. Bush. She makes a compelling case. The parallels between Harper and W. are striking:

Under Bush, the White House denied the existence of man-made climate change and gutted the ability of the US Environmental Protection Agency to go after polluters. Under Harper, the government took aim at Environment Canada, slashing its budget and restricted the ability of its own regulators to crack down on cancer-linked pollution. The Conservative Party silenced the government’s own scientists, who, for the first time ever, mounted a political campaign against Harper. Canada was also one of the first countries to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to address climate change and is the only country in the world to have withdrawn from a UN treaty to address desertification. And the list of environmental programs that Harper has slashed funding to is long and devastating.

And there is the spectre that haunts this election:

Under the guise of cracking down on voter fraud — which doesn’t exist — Republicans in state capitals passed voter-ID laws across the United States. In reality, this was a blatant attempt to restrict the ability of working families and minorities — the majority of whom are likely Democrats — to vote. Similarly, Harper’s Fair Elections Act, passed in June 2014, attempts to address the non-existent problem of voter fraud. The result is that thousands of seniors, students and First Nations will find it much harder to cast a ballot in this election.

And, like Bush, Harper claims that he is tough on crime, while paralyzing public institutions:

While the US is learning from its past and addressing the issue of mass incarceration, under Harper, Canada has recently undertaken the largest expansion of prisons since the 1930s, despite a record-low crime rate. Echoing the doctrine of Republicans in the States, he cut funding to the arts, cut funding to Canada’s public broadcaster and destroyed the national gun registry, which experts say had historically contributed to Canada’s low rates of gun violence.  

It's no wonder people are asking, "What has happened to Canada?"

He Miscalculated

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There's one week to go. Stephen Harper has tried to make this election about the economy and terrorism. But -- Tim Harper writes -- in this election, the ballot question is about change:

Over the longest election campaign in modern Canadian history, the Conservative leader has not been able to change the ballot question in this campaign — the hunger for change.

After 70 days, the hunger is still there and that means the final week of this marathon looks more and more like Justin Trudeau’s to lose. One unintended consequence of this long campaign is that Harper gave his Liberal challenger time to grow as a leader and prove that he was up to the job. It’s an open question as to whether he could have done that in a more traditional 37-day campaign.

The kid who supposedly wasn't ready increasingly looks like he is. Still, a lot can happen and a lot can change quickly:

The NDP surprise came late in 2011 and Harper’s majority was not apparent until voting day. British Columbia Liberals and Alberta Progressive Conservatives confounded pollsters and prevailed at the final moment. Kathleen Wynne surged to a majority in Ontario in the final days.

A ten week campaign was supposed to give Stephen Harper the time to pummel his enemies. Clearly, Mr. Harper miscalculated.

 

A Change For The Worse

The polls tell us that 70% of us want change -- change as a counter weight to the change Stephen Harper has delivered in the past ten years. If you think not much has changed, Carol Goar reminds you of exactly what this prime minister has "accomplished:"

A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for members of Parliament to spurn their constituents. Now, for half of parliamentarians, it is normal.

When the Conservatives took power, no one could have imagined the cancellation of the mandatory full-length census, the single best source of information about how the nation is changing and how the government is meeting these challenges. Now it is gone.

Before 2006 no Canadian prime minister — indeed no head of government in the Commonwealth — had ever been found in contempt of Parliament. It has happened twice on Harper’s watch. The Speaker of the House of Commons ruled that the government lied to Parliament and refused to release public documents. These actions contravene the principles on which responsible government is built.

Never has a prime minister attacked the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the personification of Canada’s strong, independent judiciary. Harper broke ranks, challenging Beverley McLachlin and by extension the rule of law.

Every prime minister for the past century has broadened the right to vote — to women, ethnic minorities, First Nations, Canadians living abroad, individuals with disabilities and homeless people. Harper attempted — with partial success — to reverse the process, disenfranchising thousands of voters with his Fair Elections Law.

For 58 years, no prime minister cavilled about providing life-saving medicine to refugee claimants awaiting their hearings. It was a mark of a decent nation. Harper slashed the Interim Federal Health Program “to defend the interests of Canadian taxpayers.”

Before Harper took power, Canadians were not a fearful people. We did not obsess over criminals in our communities, terrorists infiltrating our borders, bogus refugees exploiting our generosity or foreign wars threatening our security. We took reasonable precautions and got on with life. We trusted our fellow-citizens and gave refugee claimants a fair hearing. Now all of that is gone — dismissed as hopelessly naïve and unworldly.

Nor were we a xenophobic people. We weren’t unnerved by kirpans or offended by niqabs. We didn’t use terms such as “barbaric cultural practices.” We didn’t regard outsiders as a threat; immigrants and their families as a burden; or refugees as potential terrorists. We took pride in our reputation as one of the world’s few successful pluralistic societies.

If Harper's objective was to make history, he has, indeed, done that. But it's not the kind of history we -- or he -- should be proud of:

No prime minister has treated Canada’s Charter of Rights as an inconvenience he could ignore, challenge or test at taxpayers’ expense. No prime minister has sicced federal tax auditors on charities that protect the environment, speak for the poor, or fight for freedom of expression. No prime minister has stripped judges of their discretion to sentence lawbreakers. No prime minister has treated Canadian citizenship as a benefit that can be revoked at will by the government. No prime minister has forbidden federal scientists to share their findings with their international peers or the public.

There's a big difference between a change for the better and a change for the worse.

Bravely Looking Into The Future

Making political predictions is always a risky business -- particularly in this election, when the polls are all over the place. At the end of the last election, Peter C. Newman opined that the Liberal Party was dead. But, Chantal Hebert writes, Justin Trudeau will probably be the only leader of the three major parties who will be around to contest the next election:

The fact that, with a week to go, the possibility of the Liberals forming the next government is not just a figment of partisan imagination is more than most of them dared hope when they picked Trudeau.

Back then they gambled that he would mature on the job. It was not an obvious call but he has grown in his role, especially since the campaign started. It has been more than a decade since the Liberals have felt good about their campaign. For the first time since Jean Chrétien retired more than a decade ago, the party is poised to make gains on election day.

And what of Stephen Harper?

The reverse is true of Stephen Harper. 

He consistently expanded the Conservative tent over four elections but this fifth campaign has mostly been about the party falling back on its core vote.

It is not yet clear how successful Harper has been at holding the line against his rivals. His electoral swan song could still end on the false note of a defeat.

For it is almost certainly his last campaign.

Finally, there is the question of Tom Mulcair's future:

And what of Thomas Mulcair, the leader who spent the first half of the campaign on the cusp of a historic victory only to now be at risk of losing the official Opposition title he inherited from his late predecessor?

 If — as the polls are suggesting — he leads the NDP back to third place, Mulcair is unlikely to get another kick at the election can.

The New Democrats have a long and unbroken record of federal defeats and almost as long a history of giving their leaders a second or even a third chance. But a defeat this time would feel different to many party loyalists for they were asked to put quite a bit of water in their ideological wine on the way to their latest bid for government.

In ten days we'll know the answers. But today, Hebert -- who is an excellent journalist -- has bravely looked into the future.

His Best Laid Plans

                                                       https://twitter.com/

The polls are all over the place. But, if you go to political events -- even Stephen Harper's invitation only events -- you hear interesting things. Michael Harris writes:

Here’s some human intelligence gathered by yours truly on a trip this week to Vancouver. It’s not a poll. It’s just a hunch.

Shortly before I arrived, Jason Kenney had been at an event put on by the city’s large South Asian community. One prominent member of the local Sikh community approached the minister and told him that if the government’s inflammatory statements about the niqab resulted in attacks against Muslims in Canada, the Conservatives would bear the responsibility. Three attacks later, his words took on new meaning.

Those attacks are backfiring on Harper and a storm is brewing:

He has always courted the immigrant vote, and rather successfully. But the niqab offensive is reminding a lot of Canadians of the immigrants in their own past. With Harper’s racist attack on Muslims (not ‘borderline’ racist, as former Newfoundland premier Danny Williams suggested) and new legislation giving the government several ways of stripping Canadians of their citizenship, there is a restlessness rippling through an important part of the Harper base.

And it’s not just Sikhs. It’s Jews who remember their grandparents being turned away from Canadian shores. It’s Irish who remember hearing stories about how their relatives were treated like dirt here after they fled the potato famine in their native land to come here. It’s Japanese who recall the internment camps where they were sent for the crime of their ethnicity. It’s the Italians who will never quite forget being called ‘wops’ and ‘dagos’ as they tried to make their way in this country.

In a nutshell, everyone who has ever tried to make a fresh start in Canada has reason to worry about Stephen Harper’s war on the niqab. Could it be that they’re thinking we’re all Muslims now?

Some people call it karma. Some people simply hold to the belief that what goes around comes around. However you put it, the prime minister's best laid plans are going astray.

Politics At Its Most Cynical

                                                 http://www.blazingcatfur.ca/

Did Stephen Harper make his comments about banning niqabs from the public service because he was drawn off script? David Krayden writes:

First off, there is no room for improvisation in a Stephen Harper script. When cabinet ministers receive their speaking notes from the PMO for a political event, what they get is a tightly-worded succession of talking points loosely linked by references to local dignitaries and the weather. Any digression from the core topic — congratulating the Harper government for its good works — is strictly verboten.

So I really don’t think Harper doubled-down on this topic on a whim. The fact that he said it days earlier, in French and in Quebec, made it a premeditated policy announcement. If Harper were to inadvertently promote an expanded niqab ban in one official language, he would not repeat that mistake in English.

No, Harper's comments were carefully calculated to appeal to the worst instincts of some Quebecers. And, if the polls are to be believed, the gambit has worked -- even though Harper knows that the Supreme Court will, once again, send his porposed legislation into the dumpster.

It's politics at its most cynical. But that really shouldn't surprise anyone.

From Every Hill and Mole Hill

Most assuredly, Stephen Harper has been listening to Lynton Crosby -- who has a long record of calling forth bigots. Jeff Sallot writes:

A Federal Court of Appeal ruling Monday cleared the way for Ishaq to obtain her citizenship papers in time to vote on Oct. 19.

You wouldn’t blame her if she doesn’t vote Conservative. Harper isn’t worried about losing votes in the Muslim community, of course. Instead, he’s appealing to the prejudices of a small slice of the Canadian population who can be riled up by irrational fear.

Harper made a cynical political calculation to elevate the niqab to the level of a national political issue. He had polls (paid for by us, of course) that showed that a niqab ban would be popular. He doubled down when his government lost the first judicial go-round and went ahead last week with an appeal of the Ishaq case.

So that’s where we are in late 2015 — submitting the legal rights of Canadian citizens to public opinion polls. But why stop at trashing the rights of Muslim women? Why not take polls on other civil rights — say, French language rights? There was a time in Canada when language rights might not have survived the test of popular opinion.

Conservatives once used to be guided by their better angels:

That was also a time when Canadian political leaders, including Conservatives, weren’t afraid to actually lead. Bob Stanfield, to his great credit, sacked a Tory candidate in New Brunswick in the 1974 election for refusing to support bilingualism. Stanfield didn’t need to find his political courage in a printout of polling data.

That was a time when women wore religious garments without controversy. Like Sallot, I was taught by nuns:

The most exotic people in my neighbourhood were the Catholic Ursuline nuns who taught me in elementary school. They wore long black gowns and headwear from the Middle Ages. It fully covered their hair. But you could see their faces. And you knew if you were in trouble before they spoke a word. 

Harper is calculating that bigots will keep him in office.  And so he is calling them out from under every rock and away from every hill and mole hill.

What Does He Say In Private?

                                               https://www.reddit.com/

The differences between the Liberals and the Conservatives are getting starker. Susan Delacourt writes:

If this election is distilling down to a potentially ugly culture war in the final two weeks before the vote, much could rest on how Canadians feel about the people living around them.

Trudeau gave an important speech in Brampton on Sunday — one that all those who have dismissed him as ‘not ready’ probably ought to see for themselves. This being an election and all, it was analyzed immediately afterward through the prism of political strategy — for its ability to mobilize support, to give the Liberals the impression of momentum, and so on.

Simply put, Trudeau is clearly gambling that if Canadians have to choose between generosity and suspicion toward their neighbours, they will summon up their generous side. If that’s your view, the Brampton speech on Sunday probably spoke to your Canada in a way we haven’t seen in this country in a long time.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, are -- and always have been -- suspicious of their neighbours:

In case you missed it, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander and Women’s Minister Kellie Leitch announced the establishment of a special RCMP “tip line” for citizens to report people they suspect of indulging in “barbaric cultural practices.”

Already, the announcement has sparked widespread parody, including the website reportyourneighbour.ca, which lays out all the ways in which Conservative policies also could be regarded as culturally offside, if not “barbaric.”

In Winnipeg last week, Conservative MP Joyce Bateman presented a list of Liberal candidates she alleged to be anti-Israel, clearly believing it would be a crowd-pleaser at a debate sponsored by B’nai B’rith. It was not. She was booed down by many attendees and at least one shouted “shameful” as she tried to read out her list.

It's all very Nixonian. It's worth remembering that, on the White House Tapes, Nixon called Trudeau the Elder an "asshole." Pierre's response to the news was that he had been "called worse things by better people."

One wonders what Harper says about Trudeau the Younger in private.

Conscientious Stupidity

                                                 https://www.pinterest.com/

Joe Oliver announced at the end of last week that the Canadian economy had grown by 0.3% in July. And he said he doubted we were ever in recession. Now his buddies are waiting to announce that the Trans Pacific Partnership has been signed. Another shiny bauble to hang in the election window.

But Jim Stanford writes that it's too early to declare the recession over:

And while the June and July GDP numbers are positive, in my view it is too early to conclusively declare the recession over. Here are some cautionary notes:

• Seventy per cent of July's GDP growth (and 50 per cent of June's) was due to one sector: oil and mining. In particular, non-conventional oil production rebounded after forest fires and maintenance shutdowns cut its output in the spring. That rebound cannot be repeated.

• In non-oil sectors, the GDP numbers are decidedly more mixed. Of the 19 other two-digit sectors tracked by Statistics Canada (other than oil and mining), 9 experienced zero or negative growth in July. The June and July numbers reflect a major rebound in oil production, but they do not yet indicate an economy-wide recovery.

• Private sector payrolls shrank in the first two months of the third quarter (according to the Labour Force Survey). Total employment grew marginally, solely reflecting public sector hiring.  In fact, private sector employment is still lower (as of August) than in October of last year.

• Remember, the monthly GDP by industry data uses a totally different methodology than the quarterly GDP by expenditure data -- and it is the latter that determines quarterly growth rates (and hence whether or not we are in recession). In particular, the monthly numbers will not reflect the continuing decline in business capital spending which was the dominant factor behind the GDP shrinkage in the first half.

• Other macro indicators weakened during the third quarter, hardly indicating a "recovery" (including commodity prices, the loonie, the stock market, and interest rates -- see chart below). Resource investment, which accounted for 30 per cent of total business capital spending before the downturn, is still shrinking -- and possibly even faster than in the first half, in response to the dismal trends in commodity prices

• Seventy per cent of July's GDP growth (and 50 per cent of June's) was due to one sector: oil and mining. In particular, non-conventional oil production rebounded after forest fires and maintenance shutdowns cut its output in the spring. That rebound cannot be repeated.
• In non-oil sectors, the GDP numbers are decidedly more mixed. Of the 19 other two-digit sectors tracked by Statistics Canada (other than oil and mining), 9 experienced zero or negative growth in July. The June and July numbers reflect a major rebound in oil production, but they do not yet indicate an economy-wide recovery.
• Private sector payrolls shrank in the first two months of the third quarter (according to the Labour Force Survey). Total employment grew marginally, solely reflecting public sector hiring.  In fact, private sector employment is still lower (as of August) than in October of last year.
• Remember, the monthly GDP by industry data uses a totally different methodology than the quarterly GDP by expenditure data -- and it is the latter that determines quarterly growth rates (and hence whether or not we are in recession). In particular, the monthly numbers will not reflect the continuing decline in business capital spending which was the dominant factor behind the GDP shrinkage in the first half.
• Other macro indicators weakened during the third quarter, hardly indicating a "recovery" (including commodity prices, the loonie, the stock market, and interest rates. Resource investment, which accounted for 30 per cent of total business capital spending before the downturn, is still shrinking -- and possibly even faster than in the first half, in response to the dismal trends in commodity prices.

Harper still has the worst economic record of any prime minister since the end of World War II. Shiny baubles and ranting about niqabs can't change a record that bespeaks conscientious stupidity.

The Ugly Canadian

                                          http://buckdogpolitics.blogspot.ca/

Give Tom Mulcair credit. He stuck to his guns last night on the question of niqabs. A native son, he is well aware of the xenophobic streak that runs through Quebec society -- and which is occasionally fanned by people like Maurice Duplessis, Lucien Bouchard, Gilles Duceppe and Stephen Harper.

Mr. Harper -- in all his hypocritical arrogance -- presents himself as a liberator of women. Justin Trudeau, however, pointed out that there are "more men in your caucus who oppose abortion than there are women in Quebec who wear the niqab." He then asked Harper if he favoured abortion for women. Harper, of course, refused to answer the question.

Michael Den Tandt writes:

Given an opportunity to hedge or fudge, Tom Mulcair stuck grimly to his defence of a woman’s right to wear the Islamic veil or niqab during a Canadian citizenship ceremony — though this stance appears to have cost him his lead in the polls and may in the end deny him victory on Oct. 19.

“A prime minister has an obligation to protect all citizens, including minorities,” he told Stephen Harper during a prolonged four-way exchange about the niqab at the French-language debate. “What you are doing is unworthy of a prime minister.”

Unworthy of a prime minister and completely lacking in courage. Mulcair's stand will not help him in Quebec. Harper has touched an ugly nerve -- not just in Quebec, but in the rest of the country.

But, then, he's the Ugly Canadian.

Economy Or Security: That Is The Question

                                                  http://www.ctvnews.ca/

Stephen Harper  tried to boil this election down to two issues: economy and security. The economy plank hasn't worked so well for him, given the problems in the oil patch.  So now he's emphasizing security -- and railing about niqabs. Michael Harris writes:

According to senior sources in the Liberal campaign, this is nothing short of a life-and-death struggle. If the focus remains on the economy, Team Trudeau thinks it can win. Why wouldn’t they? Here’s the snapshot after a decade of Harper: a recession (his second); a dollar that has lost 12 per cent of its value since 2006; seven out of eight budgets in deficit; and an extra $150 billion added to the national debt. Not exactly an argument for staying the course. As for prudent fiscal management — raiding the budget of veterans to balance the books doesn’t count. No wonder the Grits are excited.

But if security dominates, the edge goes to Harper. The Liberals understood that coming into this joust — which is why they made the high-risk move of supporting Bill C-51. They knew Conservative strength on this file was deep, though based more on emotion than reason. The last thing they wanted was to give Stephen Harper a hot-button wedge issue to excite his xenophobic fans by making Trudeau look soft on terrorism.

Trying to innoculate themselves from the notion that they were soft on security, the Liberals voted for Bill C-51, saying they would make significant changes to the bill. But that left them open to attacks from progressives who claimed they were, once again, being buffaloed by Stephen Harper. And that shadow has been following Justin Trudeau throughout this election.

There is a way, Harris writes, for Trudeau to get out from under that shadow. In fact, before the election, the Liberals tried to get out from under it:

Before C-51 passed, Liberal MP Joyce Murray brought forward a private member’s bill, C-622, pinpointing the things in C-51 that required changes: the need for independent review of the Communications Security Establishment, for a new Intelligence and Security committee for Parliament and for a sunset clause to give the law a limited lifespan, as opposed to the Harper government’s plan to make it permanent. Murray hoped to lessen the disillusionment that grassroots supporters felt after the Liberals voted for C-51.

Murray's bill was voted down. However, she hasn't given up:

Based on her continuing interest in security matters, Murray — who finished second to Justin Trudeau in the last Liberal leadership contest — is now asking her leader to consider making further public announcements touching the national security file. She wants Team Trudeau to announce a “comprehensive” White Paper. Its purpose would be to examine Canada’s “security laws, institutions and review mechanisms” — every last scrap of it.

According to Murray, amending C-51 is only part of the job. The other part is taking current thinking on national security issues “down to the studs”. That way, if the Liberals get a chance to make good on their promise of a full review of C-51 after three years in office, there will be a solid evidentiary base for the process. Party sources tell iPolitics that the leader is mulling over Murray’s request, but the economy remains Justin Trudeau’s primary focus.

It's time for Trudeau to take on Bill C-51. And the economy is still on the ballot.