WHO WILL BLINK FIRST? The Prime Minister, Bill Blair and the RCMP Commissioner have some decisions to make as their story around whether or not the RCMP were pressured for Liberal political purposes continues to unravel. What are their options? Keith Beardsley, Atory01.com Watch Now.
Atory01, Conservative Party, Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau, NDP
A passport task force to fix the system. This is just smoke and mirrors to hide the Trudeau governments incompetence. Watch the video for some thoughts on this issue.
Watch the video HERE
#cdnpoli, Conservative_Party, Liberal Party, NDP, Justin Trudeau
Once again, the Prime Minister is mired in controversy over whether or not he tried to influence the RCMP commissioner into giving him information on the tragic shooting in Nova Scotia. Information he wanted for a political purpose. Here are my thoughts on this and where it might lead.
“Say No To A Hybrid Parliament” It is not what the Conservatives claim when they say that the Liberals and NDP don’t want to show up for work. That is not the brightest attack line- it is really about accountability. What do you think? https://youtu.be/7nvJpZavENM
Last week the Finance Minister gave a speech about nothing. Mind you she was trying to tell us she has our back in this period of inflation and looming recession. Somehow, her phony announcement of previously released spending doesn’t ring true for this potential Liberal leadership candidate.
VIEW THE BLOG HERE
ATORY01, cdnpoli, Conservative Party, Liberal Party, NDP
Joly’s Follies: A video blog looking at the disastrous week our incompetent Foreign Affairs minister just went through. https://youtu.be/1mqBSJCuyeU
What a mess and due to incompetence and nothing else
#Cdnpoli, Canadian Politics, ATORY01
The present Minister of Foreign Affairs, Melanie Joly, needs to learn when to be quiet.
It is enough that a bureaucrat in her department attended a Russian Embassy reception when Canada is supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
But to keep insisting the buck stops with her and she didn’t know etc. only serves to make her look foolish and out of touch with her department and more importantly her own office.
Anyone who has dealt with Ottawa bureaucrats knows how risk adverse they are- especially at foreign affairs. Everything there happens at a snail’s pace with lots of required sign offs for even the smallest note heading to a minister. It would not be uncommon to see five or more sign offs on a briefing note as the original desk officer’s memo got massaged by each level above that position. Massaged into a note hardly recognizable from the original one. I always found it worthwhile to get a copy of the original note.
Considering the sensitivity of Canadian-Russian-Ukrainian relations right now, there should be lots of memos out there on this event.
The minister has indicated her office knew, but not her. Dumb answer. For her office to get a note, it was almost certainly signed off by the Deputy Minister. At the very least her Chief of Staff (COS) got a copy. An ATIP might one day let us know who signed off.
If the COS got one, that note was important enough to raise the issue with the minister.
Either she has incompetent staff, or she is incompetent for hiring them and clearly, she has not put in place procedures in her office on how to handle sensitive files.
In trying to distance herself from the issue she has only succeeded in making it worse. Sometimes it is best to just shut up.
Here we go again, teams of partisans backing various candidates shouting out their membership numbers in the Conservative Leadership race. While we all know this is a fool’s game, those partisans buried in their bunkers think this is important and in effect are shouting out “look at me, aren’t we great”.
The realty is that Poilievre’s claim of 312,000 new members and Browns 150,000. (Charest won’t give his numbers, maybe that is experience playing out here) mean diddly squat when the votes are counted. As Chantal Hebert pointed out in the last contest 100,000 or about 40% of the membership didn’t bother to vote in 2020.
Historically with ranked ballots, wins on the first ballot are rare. That is Poilievre’s quandary. Beat up your opponents with numbers that you claim are accurate and maybe someone else will give up. Did that influence Brown’s stupid comment about not running if Poilievre wins?
Plus, the more you brag about how great your numbers are, the more you encourage other candidates to have quiet discussions about who their supporters can look at in 2nd, 3rd, 4th place etc.
Even without any behind the scenes games, party members are watching for every comment from the contenders. One misstep and you can lose thousands of potential votes. People initially attracted to you at an event will be constantly reevaluating everything you say. One mistake and they can shrug and say screw you I am not voting, or they can say I like another candidate better now.
Shouting out membership numbers is a foolish partisan game. The only number that counts is the number on voting day.
I hope all the candidates have top notch scrutineers on site watching every vote counted. We don’t need someone claiming some invisible force caused them to lose the leadership election.
Patrick Brown’s comment that he wouldn’t run for the Conservatives if Poilievre was the leader was quite frankly dumb.
From a strategic viewpoint he gains nothing,first round but loses a lot. He comes across as a bit of a sore loser and he hasn’t even lost yet. Maybe he forgot that it is a ranked ballot.
His comment reflects a deeper issue within the Conservative Party, characterized by the nastiness of this leadership campaign. Gone are the days when you could disagree on policy (no party member ever agrees with every position a party takes) but you could still unite and go forward together. Just look at the PC’s and Canadian Alliance.
Back then, those that disagreed with your position were opponents and while you disagreed, you still respected them. That has changed. In the present race you are no longer an opponent, you are the enemy. That is a very big difference.
I have been around a long time- Diefenbaker and Dalton Camp, Mulroney and Clark, Reform and PC, Canadian Alliance and PC, the United Alternative etc.
When you cannot respect your opponent because they have different views, and you present a take no prisoners position your party is in trouble.
Time for the media to ask every leadership candidate if they could run and work with everyone of their leadership opponents. Let’s clear the air and get this into the open- then the membership can make up their own mind as to who is best suited to be leader.
Membership sales have now wrapped up for the Conservative leadership race.
Who will be the first candidate to complain about the process or complain about the numbers they say they reported?
Who will be the first candidate to claim some mysterious force didn’t count their memberships correctly resulting in them losing the race similar to Trump in the USA?
This has been a nasty race so far, very divisive and offers the potential for long term damage to the party.
Can these candidates work together, or will they even want to work together after it is over is a major issue that has not been addressed?
Certainly, the ugliness of this campaign has turned many members supporting one candidate against other candidates and their supporters.
Unless the leadership contenders smarten up, they will create long lasting damage to the party and its chances of winning election.
The modern CPC is a coalition of ideas and members. Using wedge politics to divide the party into warring factions is a recipe for disaster and the party will end up spending a long time in the political wilderness.