Author: KEITH_BEARDSLEY

On Thanksgiving weekend, we were treated to a Globe and Mail story on the virtues of Chrystia Freeland.

It was interesting timing come as it did as the Prime Minister prepares for a cabinet shuffle amid reports of some Liberals mulling over the idea that perhaps it is time for Trudeau to take a walk on the sand.

It could be just a coincidence that this story appeared when it did, but it offers a nice contrast between her and our frat boy Prime Minister.

The Russian KGB built a file on her anti-communist activities. Did Trudeau when of university age do anything important?

While at university, Freeland was speaking at anticommunist rallies. Trudeau wasn’t doing anything important or memorable, unless being a short-term drama teacher counts?

Freeland was tough on Communism years ago. Trudeau admires the Chinese government and appears weak when dealing with them.

Our allies can takeaway that this is a person they can trust, as opposed to Trudeau who has watched key allies form new defensive military pacts without even letting the PM know that such discussions were being conducted.

In many ways it was an excellent compare and contrast piece between the current Liberal leader and someone that is seen by many Liberals as the heir apparent. Certainly, this article gives Trudeau and his PMO staff something to mull over while he goes about picking his cabinet.

Does he keep her at Finance? Some PMs put potential challengers there. Many finance ministers become very unpopular, especially those who must cancel programs or raise taxes to pay for them and any other future goodies the Liberals produce. If the Liberal’s daycare program doesn’t work out as expected, who gets the blame?  It won’t be Trudeau.

Foreign Affairs is also another spot to put a potential challenger. As PM, he can keep her travelling all over the world seriously limiting her ability to organize for a run at him.

Another spot is Public Works. Pretty much the dullest cabinet job out there with the added bonus that there is always another scandal around a contract just waiting to come out.

Liberals tell me that it wasn’t an important article, and the timing is pure coincidence. Really? I go back to the Diefenbaker days and Dalton Camp and in one way or another I have been involved in something like 10 leadership races in my own party and tracked innumerable ones in other parties.

Coincidence? I think not.

What would Thanksgiving be without a Trudeau photo op?

Of course, this time he chose to introduce an Afghan refugee family to one of our Canadian traditions.

Under normal circumstances it would warrant a yawn from the public, but this time it is different.

Trudeau is the guy whose desk the buck stops on. This is the guy who was in charge of the pathetic attempt to retrieve and bring back to Canada hundreds of individuals and their families who had helped and fought with Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

Families who are now in hiding, because he didn’t do his job and when he didn’t have the guts to see things through like our other allies did. Instead, he called an election for his own vanity while the Taliban hunted our former supporters.

This is the man who had our hardworking rescuers pull out early, leaving the UK and the USA and Ukrainians to finish up what they could for us.

Trudeau figures this one photo op will make us forget his screw up in Afghanistan. It won’t, because that mess is one for the history books.

When all is said and done election 2021 will end where we pretty much left off a couple of months ago.

Was it worth it- NO.

For the most part it was a repeat of the same tired policies of the previous election- and once again the majority of voters in Canada rejected the Conservative’s policies.

The CPC will of course pat themselves on the back for getting the highest vote percentage of any party which means zero in realty.

I feel sorry for O’Toole. He started so far behind in the polls and ran a very credible campaign. The knives will be out of course, we are already seeing the gutless “unnamed sources” calling for a possible leadership review.

The Conservatives shifted a bit on climate change, but not enough for the newer generation of voters. Neither does their childcare plan work for the younger urban voters or families living near the poverty line. The Liberal plan simply plays better with modern, younger families regardless of its cost.

The Conservatives also fell apart on the vaccine issue, the one issue that was originally one of their best attack issues. O’Toole’s everyday refusal to answer the simple question of how many of his candidates were vaccinated showed him as weak on this issue and afraid to criticize the antivaxxers in his party. It created an element of distrust in many voters who liked him on other issues. The Liberals took quick advantage of this and the antivax protestors to turn this issue into one of their stronger attack points.

Add in the other two famous Liberal attack points-abortion and gun control and you have succeeded in limiting voters’ choices, especially in the urban centers where there is always a heavy concentration of ridings that vote Liberal or NDP. It is hard to believe that a modern political party still can’t put those two issues to bed once and for all and the Conservatives will still allow these two issues to remain out there to cost them more votes the next time around.

In the next six months watch for right wing elements in the party to try to remove O’Toole. The usual unnamed sources will keep that alive. Watch for the Liberals who don’t like to lose and a minority government is a loss in their eyes; to start playing the same game with their now twice wounded leader. The difference will be that they will have the brains to do it discreetly.

12-18 months for now we will be doing it all over again.

As we enter the final week of our pandemic election, here is some advice from an old political pro- take a deep breath and relax.

Do your own research. Dig deep, ignore the media hype.

The media will push poll after poll at you- after all they are paying big dollars for them. Take a glance at them, then largely ignore them. Some pollsters may have a bias, you rarely know their sample size or the order the questions were asked and the margin of error is buried if shown at all in the news story.

In a tight race (which if you believe the polls) is what we are seeing now, a difference of one or two percent each day with parties going back and forth in the lead is often within the poll’s margin of error.

Read widely. Find a few columnists or reporters that at least try to report the facts without an obvious bias. Gone are the days when the majority of reporters tried to accurately report all sides of an issue. Many today would be better classified as opinion writers.

Various television channels and newspapers have a known slant or bias. All of which of course they will deny. Read, watch, and form your own opinion.

Political war rooms will be closely watching the various leader’s tour schedules. Where are they today, how long are they staying, where are they going next?

In the last week, those leaders that are confident that they are gaining ground and have momentum will often be visiting ridings they don’t hold. Instead, they will be in ridings held by their opponents, trying to squeeze a few more votes their way and snatch the riding away from the other party.

You will find the leaders that feel their campaign is in trouble, constantly dropping into ridings that they already hold. Hoping in the final days of the campaign that their fleeting visit- often at an airport or riding level BBQ or campaign office will keep that riding loyal to their team.

In the last 2-3 days of the campaign, watch for each party to try to deliver a knockout blow with a big story. Every party keeps one or two of these (we held some back for a year or longer) to try and change voters’ minds when the target of the story has too little time to respond and change the public’s view of them.

In the end, think for yourself, form your own opinions based on the best facts that you can uncover.

Make sure that you vote. In a close election, every vote really does count.

With an election call expected any day now, expect the opposition parties to continue their whining about it being unnecessary.

It doesn’t really matter what these parties say publicly, very few Canadians are paying attention. We are all too busy getting our lives back to normal. Other than a political partisan or media type do you know anyone talking about how horrible it is that Trudeau will call an election?

While people of all parties enter politics to help others and move the country forward, political reality soon sets in. Win and you are a somebody…lose and you are a nobody. Just ask a defeated politician how quickly the phone calls and invitations stopped.

Politics is about winning- if you are a minority government you look for the winning conditions that will get you to majority status. If You are the opposition, you look for the winning conditions that will allow you to topple the government and hopefully win your majority.

Do you believe that if the NDP or Conservatives were in Trudeau’s position that they wouldn’t be looking for a reason to call an election if the winning conditions were there for them? How many hours do you think were spent in the Harper Opposition Leaders office plotting the downfall of the Martin minority government?

If you think a minority NDP or Conservative government would be behaving differently to the Trudeau minority government, I have some swampland in Florida to sell to you.

The election will be decided in the last 2-3 weeks when Canadians decide to pull themselves away from their BBQs and pay attention.

Until then ignore the feigned indignation of the opposition parties because they would be doing the same thing as Trudeau.

The Green Party still doesn’t get it.

You can’t be successful and win elections or even get MPs elected when you are continually and publicly stabbing your leader in the back.

Sorry folks, but that is a recipe for disaster, especially when an election is weeks away.

It seems that every day there is another media story talking about the divided party. Just yesterday there were more media reports that new candidates for the party’s governing body oppose her.

So far, the party which has been forced to lay off staff has spent $100,000 on legal fees to take their leader to court, with another $100,000 earmarked for future court costs, all because Paul won an independent arbitrator’s decision.

So, a cash strapped party is going to blow $200,000 just before an election call.  You can’t make this stuff up!

No political leader is perfect. A leader can’t always make statements or comments that please 100% of party members or supporters 100% of the time.

The big question remains why the continuous attacks on her and why the attempts to kick her out of her job?

There is no such thing as a spontaneous uprising against a leader. It is often someone with a bruised ego, sour grapes, losing candidates, someone passed over, and the list goes on. Someone will benefit if the party dumps Paul. The question is who?

The attacks are continuous and reflect a degree of planning. Someone is hiding in the background coordinating the attacks. Time for the media to dig deep and let voters know who it is, they can’t hide in the background forever. The media would be quick to do this if it were the Conservatives and even the Liberal Martin-Chretien war was brought into the open by the media.

Paul would be smart to treat public pledges of loyalty carefully. There are enough examples in Canadian politics of individuals pledging public loyalty while stabbing their leader in the back.

As Julius Caesar would say “Et tu Brute”.

Can Paul survive remains the question. Whoever is behind the push to oust her is doing irreparable harm to the party for years to come.

The Blame Game Has Started.

The potential for an election call has given rise to the usual blame game- as in you are using taxpayer funds to pay friends or give them contracts.

It is great fun for political staff to play this game and once in awhile you can come across a real scandal. Three come to mind- Jane Stewart and the Transitional Job Fund, Shawinigate and of course the Sponsorship Scandal.

There is nothing out there like any of those right now. If we move outside of Ottawa, how many voters are staying up at night worrying about a childhood friend of the PM getting a contract? Unless you can get the police involved, the story doesn’t have legs.

However, it does make for lots of good video clips of feigned outrage by Conservative MPs. Does the CPC brain trust think that the public believes for one minute that the Conservatives would never give a contract to a friend’s company?

By the way the CPC attack team needs to learn a basic rule when developing a line of attack- always check your own house first and make sure no one on your side is doing the same thing?

Keith Beardsley is a former Deputy Chief of Staff to a Prime Minister for Issues Management. He was a senior political advisor and was involved with political research, Question Period, political attack teams and election war rooms for over 20 years.

The political silly season has arrived. The House of Commons is shut for the summer and the Senate will do the government bidding in spite of their phony declarations of independence. 

With rumours of an election call, let’s take a quick look at the parties.

Liberals: Clearly in trouble on a host of issues from indigenous failures to  a PM and his fake feminism to a DND that needs a huge clean up, to many ministers who need to be kicked out and basically all-round failures on so many fronts. 

The sad thing is they and one of our worse PMs in history will get re-elected. Not because they are any good, but because there is no alternative. 

Does anyone understand the present Conservative Party?  I have been a Conservative for decades, worked at the highest levels of the party and I am still trying to figure out what they represent.

They have a reasonable, but dull and moderate leader who has no control over messaging. It looks like Poilievre is the true voice if the party, not O’Toole. Pierre is a nice guy, but it is time to shut up and let yourself fit into the global election strategy if there is one. He should save his leadership aspirations until after the next election. They still don’t get urban and millennial voters who are beginning to replace the baby boomers in influence.

Add into that the still many unanswered questions on the abortion issue and this dog don’t hunt.

O’Toole has to really take control of the party and so far he hasn’t. Too many middle of the road Canadians don’t fully trust the Conservatives no matter how nice a guy O’Toole might be. In the end that is a leadership issue- O’Toole has to step up and really take control of the party if he wants even a slight chance of winning. 

The NDP have turned into the flavour of the day. Whatever today’s issue, they rush their leader out to get press coverage. There is not much coherence in what they do. Most Canadians don’t trust them to have a realistic economic platform and spend, spend, spend, our tax dollars has already been done by Trudeau. 

The Bloc exist because of the failings of the central govt and a PM who will grovel for votes in Quebec ridings. They also exist because a CPC alternative is a pipe dream. It won’t happen until the CPC represents modern Canadian and Quebec values and beliefs. That doesn’t look like it will happen any day soon.

The Green Party is still a dream. In spite of what the Greens tell us, at the federal level they are a long way from becoming a winning political party. They are still more of a movement which is exciting for those involved, but that doesn’t get you elected. Unfortunately, being elected is what counts at this time. The problem with movements is that lots of different voices want to be heard which confuses the message. Under the previous leader climate issues so dominated their agenda that voters heard nothing about the rest of their platform which had a lot to offer to Canadians. They basically were a one trick pony.

In other words, they were so focused on a couple of issues that they never got the rest of their platform in front of voters- you don’t win elections that way and if you don’t win you remain a voice in the political wilderness, no matter how valid your platform.

The present internal difficulty with their leader reflects the lack of understanding of what it takes to win. The public is watching as they try to destroy their present leader- yet they still want you to vote for them- why? Their choice is to accept some message discipline or remain in the wilderness for many years to come. Their much referenced, European Green success stories didn’t happen overnight, and the European Greens didn’t become a political force with a complete lack of message discipline. Paul needs help, she is smart and articulate, if she can survive, there is great potential there.

End result, unless there is a major unforeseen political event, Trudeau will be elected again while the country staggers forward under his lack of true leadership. After this win he should probably bow out for string of cooperate board memberships and the speakers circuit- all I can say is good riddance, for the sake of this country it can’t happen soon enough.

Keith Beardsley is a former senior advisor to five federal political leaders and a former Deputy Chief of Staff for Issues Management to a Prime Minister. He has over 50 years of involvement in Canadian politics both in an Opposition role and in government.

Once again, we see mixed messaging on the vaccine roll out.

NACI: ‘Individuals who received a 1st dose of an mRNA vaccine should be offered the same mRNA product for their 2nd dose. If the same product is not available another mRNA vaccine is considered interchangeable and should be used to complete the series.”

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: ‘COVID-19 vaccines are not interchangeable. If you received a Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, you should get the same product for your second shot.”

NACI communications and announcements through this period have been a disaster, creating confusion and probably adding to vaccine hesitancy amongst Canadians.

Over decades of political involvement, I have seen some pretty dumb communications strategies by all parties, but, the NACI takes home the prize, hands down.

They need to either fire their PR and Comms people or simply shut up!

Trudeau expects Canadians to enjoy “a one-dose summer.”

Is he nuts? Is he completely oblivious to the damage his failed vaccine procurement program has caused?

Canadians are hurting. We have seen loved ones die, others have suffered horrible pain in ICU and this so-called leader tells us to enjoy a one dose summer.

How come our American and UK allies are not enjoying a one dose summer?

How come they are now opening up, returning to normal?

Born with a silver spoon, Trudeau has zero idea of what it is like to be an average Canadian.

When things get tough, he writes himself a cheque from his million-dollar trust fund. The same way he thought the solution to Canadians financial problems was to cut them a cheque from the Government of Canada.

This man has zero understanding of what Canadian families living in lock downs and faced with the Covid virus are going through right now.

Don’t expect him to understand escalating grocery prices. When was the last time Trudeau actually paid out of his pocket for his family’s grocery bill?

Gasoline prices are starting to move quickly upwards, partially due to his carbon tax. When was the last time he paid to fill up a vehicle’s gas tank? Don’t mention his monumental screw up on line 5 in Michigan. Those huge gasoline and natural gas costs haven’t hit Canadian’s pocketbooks yet- but it will drain our bank accounts. How will seniors on fixed incomes pay for all of this?

He lives in his government subsidized Rideau cottage, oblivious to what Canadians are facing, reading talk points designed to get him re-elected and to cover his ass for his failures. He has never run a business and you could say never held a real job. How can he understand the pain, frustration and financial ruin facing small business owners due to extended lock downs- caused by lack of vaccines- the one job he had to do and failed?

Obviously, Liberal pre-election focus groups suggested the “one dose summer” was a wining talk point for him.

I suggest Canadians use a different talk point for him- “there is the door” and give the finger to a “one-dose summer.”