‘Be ready for Aug. 8’: some senior Liberals expect to kick o
raydan @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:02 pm
Tricks Tricks:
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
Can't go wrong with Rhino.
Or giant meteor
I think that's one of the Rhino party election promises.
llama66 @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:32 pm
Llama King Party.
CDN_PATRIOT @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:46 pm
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
I know, but they have a chance. Berating people for their lack of knowledge only makes them defensive
Exactly why I'm so defensive on here. Several people on this forum (Not Dr. Caleb) insult me time and again and talk down to me like I'm worse than dirt. No one deserves that kind of treatment whatsoever.
I have enough stress in life that it's making me see things down a narrow path, and that's all I can do right now until my situation improves and the universe stops hating me. I also need to stop making bad decisions every so often, because the only thing left to blame is me.
All I want is to have meaningful discussion here. Is that too much to ask?
-J.
JaredMilne @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:20 pm
Herbie is right about how Trudeau would be foolish not to go for it now, but there's absolutely no f*cking justification to request that the GG dissolve Parliament. The Liberal government hasn't lost Parliament's confidence, way too many people are still struggling with problems related to COVID and/or forest fires, we have to figure out how the hell we're going to get our finances in order now that the pandemic is winding down, residential school searches are still going on...do I need to go on?
It's one thing to request dissolution and an election when the government actually loses a confidence vote like Paul Martin did in 2005 and Stephen Harper did in 2011. That's required by the Constitution, and in '05 the Liberals were burned out. It's also one thing to request dissolution in compliance with our fixed election date laws. When Harper did that in 2015 and Trudeau did it in 2019, they were merely following the rules set out by Parliament.
But this is the same bargain-basement politics Trudeau came in promising he'd change, riding on his image of being a hip, young progressive champion. I remember reading about stupidity like his claiming he admired China's basic dictatorship on a Quebec talk show, and pissing off Acadians by suggesting that English and French shouldn't be our only official languages in Canada in his early career before he got elected.
My mother asked me my views of Trudeau, and I said that I thought he inherited his father's charisma, but not his father's intellect.
Sometimes I hate being right.
raydan @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:56 pm
2 words... "Secret Agenda"
insert evil laugh here
Scape @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 5:53 pm
JaredMilne JaredMilne:
Herbie is right about how Trudeau would be foolish not to go for it now, but there's absolutely no f*cking justification to request that the GG dissolve Parliament. The Liberal government hasn't lost Parliament's confidence, way too many people are still struggling with problems related to COVID and/or forest fires, we have to figure out how the hell we're going to get our finances in order now that the pandemic is winding down, residential school searches are still going on...do I need to go on?
It's one thing to request dissolution and an election when the government actually loses a confidence vote like Paul Martin did in 2005 and Stephen Harper did in 2011. That's required by the Constitution, and in '05 the Liberals were burned out. It's also one thing to request dissolution in compliance with our fixed election date laws. When Harper did that in 2015 and Trudeau did it in 2019, they were merely following the rules set out by Parliament.
But this is the same bargain-basement politics Trudeau came in promising he'd change, riding on his image of being a hip, young progressive champion. I remember reading about stupidity like his claiming he admired China's basic dictatorship on a Quebec talk show, and pissing off Acadians by suggesting that English and French shouldn't be our only official languages in Canada in his early career before he got elected.
My mother asked me my views of Trudeau, and I said that I thought he inherited his father's charisma, but not his father's intellect.
Sometimes I hate being right.
It's one thing to request dissolution and an election when the government actually loses a confidence vote like Paul Martin did in 2005 and Stephen Harper did in 2011. That's required by the Constitution, and in '05 the Liberals were burned out. It's also one thing to request dissolution in compliance with our fixed election date laws. When Harper did that in 2015 and Trudeau did it in 2019, they were merely following the rules set out by Parliament.
But this is the same bargain-basement politics Trudeau came in promising he'd change, riding on his image of being a hip, young progressive champion. I remember reading about stupidity like his claiming he admired China's basic dictatorship on a Quebec talk show, and pissing off Acadians by suggesting that English and French shouldn't be our only official languages in Canada in his early career before he got elected.
My mother asked me my views of Trudeau, and I said that I thought he inherited his father's charisma, but not his father's intellect.
Sometimes I hate being right.
^^ THIS!!
I would say Jr is very smart, in fact he is conniving. His father, disagree with him all you want, HAD vision. His son is in it for power.
JaredMilne @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:31 pm
Scape Scape:
^^ THIS!!
I would say Jr is very smart, in fact he is conniving. His father, disagree with him all you want, HAD vision. His son is in it for power.
He's good at retail politics, but that's his main strength. And even then he does stupid things like play dress-up on his trip to India, which just made him-and us-look foolish to the world. I've seen multiple pundits these days talking about how he says all of the right things, but when it comes to actually delivering the results he often comes up short. He's stumbled at some basic elements of governance, like appointing people to important government offices. And a cunning tactician like Jean Chretien would never have let SNC-Lavalin become the festering sore it did.
At least Pierre, for all his faults, actually achieved a lot when it came to bilingualism, multiculturalism, the Charter and patriation. There's a reason I put Dad at #5 during last year's Reflections On Canada Day when I ranked the Prime Ministers, but put Junior down at #12.
Scape @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 8:01 pm
He's not a brute like Jean was so he doesn't keep his ministers in line with force. Rather, he is all about the sizzle of the Liberal brand. That's how he snagged the Green MP. His promises are deliberately vague giving him wiggle room. He is has a very polished A game when it comes to PR but you can see he like to play dress up a little too much. Again, all sizzle no steak.
As for policy, I have no idea where he stands but whatever the NDP percolates as catchy in a focus group I am sure they will adopt and say it was theirs all along.
JaredMilne @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:22 pm
Scape Scape:
He's not a brute like Jean was so he doesn't keep his ministers in line with force. Rather, he is all about the sizzle of the Liberal brand. That's how he snagged the Green MP. His promises are deliberately vague giving him wiggle room. He is has a very polished A game when it comes to PR but you can see he like to play dress up a little too much. Again, all sizzle no steak.
As for policy, I have no idea where he stands but whatever the NDP percolates as catchy in a focus group I am sure they will adopt and say it was theirs all along.
As for policy, I have no idea where he stands but whatever the NDP percolates as catchy in a focus group I am sure they will adopt and say it was theirs all along.
Swiping good ideas from other parties is the oldest trick in the Liberal playbook. Prime Ministers like Mackenzie King, Pearson and Trudeau Senior were the ones who implemented a lot of the modern social safety net, but the NDP and its CCF predecessor were the ones who originally proposed a lot of those ideas (and in the case of medicare, implemented it provincially during Tommy Douglas's reign in Saskatchewan). Chretien got the books balanced after the chronic deficits of the Trudeau Senior and Mulroney years, but it was Preston Manning and the Reform Party who arguably set the table for him by advocating major spending cuts. Hell, Wilfrid Laurier got shellacked by John A. Macdonald when he advocated free trade against Macdonald's protectionism, so when he took over after Macdonald's death Laurier simply kept Macdonald's protectionism in place.
There's nothing wrong with this tactic, and Laurier et al. deserve the credit they get for implementing those ideas, but Trudeau Junior won't exactly be breaking from Liberal tradition if he steals anything from the NDP platform.
Scape @ Tue Aug 03, 2021 10:04 pm
Nothing wrong at all until you drive the franchise into the ground. It's one thing to know which way the political winds are blowing and it is quite another to become the place where good ideas die. Just ask Activision/Blizzard or EA. Their stocks are only fed upon the young blood of studios they buy up and suck dry of all IP (while also preventing competition of their own brand) to end up a zombie husk devoid of direction and ideas.
Sure the liberals are better stewards of the economy than the cons (just look at the debts after office) overall but comparing the Liberals to the cons is like saying you are the tallest midget.
Tricks @ Wed Aug 04, 2021 7:33 am
CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:
All I want is to have meaningful discussion here. Is that too much to ask?
-J.
It's impossible to have meaningful discussion with someone who you present data and facts to and they ignore it. And that's what you do.
JaredMilne @ Wed Aug 04, 2021 9:30 pm
Fortunately, as Andrew Coyne points out, just because Justin Trudeau wants an election doesn't mean he'll actually get it:
$1:
There’s a law against snap elections – and the governor-general is supposed to enforce it
Everyone has been dumping on Jagmeet Singh from a great height for his letter to the Governor-General, recommending she refuse the Prime Minister’s request, should it come, to dissolve Parliament and call an election.
Does he not know how our system of government works, a number of commentators wondered aloud? Others accused the NDP leader of grandstanding, preying upon public ignorance to score a political point. Because convention dictates the governor-general acts solely upon the advice of her first minister. Period. End of story.
Not so fast. The Governor-General may generally be bound to act as instructed, but in exceptional circumstances, constitutional scholars agree, she retains the discretion to act independently of the prime minister’s advice. The convention is particularly well-established with regard to requests for dissolution.
If, for example, a prime minister were to demand a new election mere months after the last, the governor-general would have the right to call upon someone else to form a government, if she were persuaded someone else could.
Governor-General will agree to a Trudeau request to call a snap election, expert says
More broadly, as the eminent political scientist Peter Russell has written, she has the right, and indeed the obligation, to reject the prime minister’s advice where necessary to “protect the parliamentary system of government.” If the PM were to give her advice that “seems seriously adverse to the functioning of parliamentary democracy,” according to Prof. Russell, “it should not be followed.”
The governor-general, in short, is bound by other conventions, too: notably, to uphold our system of government. And among the things that define that system is the rule of law – the notion that everyone is bound to act in accordance with the law, including the governments that pass them.
Hence Mr. Singh’s appeal to the Governor-General. At its core, it was rooted in the rule of law: Specifically, the law stipulating that federal elections must be held, not at a time convenient to the prime minister, but on a fixed timetable: “the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year” after the last election.
Passed in 2007, the law has since become, in conventional wisdom, something of a joke – a bit of symbolism without real teeth. After all, didn’t the prime minister who brought it in, Stephen Harper, himself call a snap election the very next year? And wasn’t he permitted to do so by a provision of the same law, stipulating that nothing in it affects the powers of the governor-general, “including the power to dissolve Parliament at the Governor-General’s discretion”?
Well, maybe. The toothless reading of the law may be commonplace now, but that was not the understanding on which it was passed. Government ministers, from the prime minister down, were at pains to assure Parliament the law would be binding on them, and on all future governments.
The non-derogation clause was presented not as an open-ended exception that would empty the bill of all meaning, but as a bit of pro forma boilerplate to protect the bill from legal challenges – since governor-generals’ powers can only be changed by constitutional amendment.
The only occasion in which the governor-general would actually use the discretion to which the clause referred, ministers insisted, was in the event a government were defeated on a vote of no confidence. Well, there was one other potential occasion: If a prime minister were to try, notwithstanding the law, to call a snap election, it would be open to the governor-general to stop him.
How do I know all this? Because the minister responsible for the bill said so at the time. “A prime minister who called an election for no reason, after not having lost the confidence,” Rob Nicholson, government house leader and minister of democratic reform, told the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee on Dec. 6, 2006, “would be into a very difficult constitutional situation that would require perusal by the governor-general.”
Challenged further, he clarified: “If a prime minister, after three and a half years, for no reason understandable to the public, demanded a dissolution of Parliament by the governor-general, I believe that under this legislation the governor-general would be within his or her rights to deny that.” (Emphasis mine.)
The governor-general’s discretion might not have been circumscribed by the legislation, in other words, but the PM’s was – by the governor-general’s. The vice-regal discretion the law preserved was not only to call elections, where the law allowed them, but to refuse to call them, where it did not. “It is a true restriction of the powers of the prime minister,” Mr. Nicholson commented, “and a good one.”
Whatever combination of cynicism and laziness may have habituated us to the idea that the people who pass our laws are entitled to ignore them when they prove inconvenient, it is in fact a monstrous corruption – one that eats at the very foundations of our system of government.
A snap election may be within the letter of the law, but not the spirit. And is not the spirit of the law the very thing the governor-general is supposed to represent?
Thanos @ Wed Aug 04, 2021 9:55 pm
"Spirit of the law" is a much-abused term, especially by pundits. If it's technically and constitutionally legal for a PM or president to exercise his/hers powers within the limits of the law then they have every right to do so. The dissent of the chattering class means next to nothing in these instances. The new GG isn't going to interfere in the process if a snap election is called any more than any other GG in the past ever has. The Queen's representative doesn't care any more about Canadian media caterwauling than the actual Queen does herself.
I don't see Trudeau getting a backlash from a supposedly pissed-off public if an election is called either. Except for the conservative portion of the Twitter mob there's not much evidence than anyone else in the country is enraged at the thought of having to go out and vote.
PluggyRug @ Thu Aug 05, 2021 6:52 am
Thanos Thanos:
"there's not much evidence than anyone else in the country is enraged at the thought of having to go out and vote.
And there lies the rub, none of the party's are worth voting for.
Thanos @ Thu Aug 05, 2021 1:59 pm
The ennui of the moment seems to be an ocean so massive that it's quite easily drowning any supposed outrage at the politicians. An election? Excuse me while I yawn at the thought of the prospect. 