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.
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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.
Jason Kenney thinks the nastiness we all saw at the recent unofficial Conservative leadership debate was due to first night jitters. I doubt it very much.
Over the years, I was involved in countless debate preparations and practices. Debate prep for any candidate be it during an election or for a leadership debate is never unscripted. If they plan on winging it, then that candidate is in trouble.
Every line spoken by the two main contenders (Poilievre and Charest) and I suspect the others as well, was researched, analyzed for impact and TV sound bite/clip. Every attack line was signed off by the research team, the communication team, the campaign manager and finally the candidate.
These attack lines were put together as scripts and practiced possibly with people standing in as other candidates, so they could get used to the push backs, fix their own body language etc.
Patrick Brown was criticized for not attending, but after watching what he missed it was probably a smart move to stay away. No one covered themselves in glory that night.
Conservatives constantly focus on the now, the quick hit and often forget that it is not just party members watching these events, but the voting public too.
I will say Scott Aitchison got it right, they all have to work together after the contest is over. Can you see that happening after what you saw in the debate? I didn’t and I am sure voters didn’t either. That does not bode well for whoever wins.
As Conservative Party members try to unravel who is who in the leadership race- do not forget the public is also doing the same thing.
As with any leadership race we have lots of candidates with egos bigger than experience. Remember the “He Is Not Ready” slogan the Conservatives used against Trudeau? Well look at our list of leadership candidates.
The latest bunch according to the party web site consists of:
Scott Aitchison Jean Charest Leona Alleslev Marc Dalton
Roman Baber Leslyn Lewis Patrick Brown Pierre Poilievre
As you can see all of them are household names and recognized from coast to coast. In realty most are nice people, but really? You want to be the leader?
Right now, Poilievre is considered to be the front runner.
Yet, a wise old Director of Communications for Joe Clark by the name of Bill Rodgers, used to tell me in our issues management meetings to sit back and watch as the media (of which he was once one of them) love a horse race. They have no interest in a coronation. He used to say give them a few weeks and the media will begin to level the playing field. He was usually correct.
Are we seeing that now with Poilievre? The story on owning rental property, the Steam Whistle story etc.
Let us sit back and watch who they build up and who they tear now to level the playing field.
Either way enjoy it. Take an honest look at who is running, their experience level, their platform and decide for yourself.
When Trudeau decided to create a slush fund for newspapers who felt they needed extra dollars there was a lot of concern over how criteria was designed. Rex Murphy recently wrote and excellent column here.
While REBEL is the issue today, what will happen down the road? While I personally don’t read, watch or follow anything that media outlet does, and yes, I know who they are, Canadians should be concerned about how the decision making is done, who does it and the impact on freedom of the press.
Freedom of the press can be attacked because of the amount of fake news out there, but, do you want government bureaucrats deciding who is good and who is bad? Who gets money from the Liberal government slush fund and who doesn’t? Perhaps the bigger question is why is there a slush fund in the first place?
There is not a government or politician out there, regardless of party, who doesn’t dislike some segment of Canadian media.
If you think programs are not designed with application criteria specifically to prevent a company from applying as Murphy suggests, think again.
Anyone who has been a political staffer in a minister’s office, the OLO, or PMO knows this is done and quite often too. Think of tender documents for defence contracts, government supplies, standing contracts and so on.
The Trudeau Liberals have lots of ideas on how to regulate the media, assist some media, reign in the internet and fake news etc.
Watch them closely.
This is one of the better political interviews that I have seen in a long time, Jean Charest was definitely on his game. For those that didn’t catch it, whether you like him or don’t, it is worth watching. You have to sit through some ads at the beginning, but it is worth it.
Click the link 674&binId=1.1164511&playlistPageNum=1
Full disclosure, I am still neutral in this contest, but I did work for Charest in his Leaders Office when he was the leader of the PC Party.