Politics in 2016

[Retired AF Guy]

And then there was one:

Brian Pallister's PCs win majority government in Manitoba.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

When I saw our friendly PM on The National, I thought it managed to kill two birds with a stone: It made the PM look condescending and arrogant, while making Peter Mansbridge look like a little girl at a boy band's concert.

I would surmise that there are many many more people out there in Canada (at least a lot more than the Liberal may think there are) that have a good basic understanding of science in general and for whom the little speech learned by rote by the PM (remember, he was a drama teacher: he can learn and deliver his lines by rote without having a clue what he is saying) is of such limited and obvious contents that its equivalent to a formula one mechanic explaining that they will make the car faster by making the engine more powerful and increasing the air intake.

What I found more interesting in recent news, however, is the PBO's report that basically state that the Liberals exaggerated the alleged budget deficit and particularly that for the current year, the budget would have had a small surplus, funny enough exactly as the Conservatives said it would.

 

[Altair]

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/tasha-kheiriddin-in-the-2015-election-the-millennial-moment-arrived

The much ignored youth vote finally showed up on election day.

Perhaps going forward, they/we cannot just be written off because we don't vote.

And who knows, maybe the selfie voters will be courted by future leadership of all parties, not just the liberals.

According to a study by Abacus Data, young Canadians — long assumed to be apathetic and uninvolved — were the driving force behind our country’s dramatic change of government in 2015.

Participation by young voters in the last election increased more than any other age group over the 2011 election: 67 per cent of voters aged 18-25 showed up at the polls, up from 55 per cent four years earlier. Breaking the numbers down further, 58 per cent of 18-20 year olds voted, as did 71 per cent of 21-23 year olds and 72 per cent of 24-25 year olds. And young voters’ preferences changed dramatically from one election to the next. In 2011, 36 per cent cast their ballots for the NDP, 24 per cent for the Conservatives and 17 per cent for the Liberals. But in 2015, those totals shifted: 45 per cent of young voters chose the Liberals, 25 per cent the NDP and 20 per cent the Conservatives.

So what motivated young voters to come out to vote — and to vote the way they did? The answers likely lie in the differences between the 2011 and 2015 electoral climate. While the Conservatives entered both campaigns as the governing party, in 2011 they had governed for six years with two minority governments, while by 2015, they had been in the majority for four years. That majority led the Tories to govern differently: one frequently got the sense they were packing in all the legislation they were unable to pass in the previous two minorities.

The Conservatives pursued an aggressive tough-on-crime agenda, went heavy on national security issues and were repeatedly criticized for being “anti-democratic” for crafting giant omnibus bills. For an electorate that hadn’t seen a majority government since 2003, Tory rule felt heavy-handed. For young people who are more disposed to challenge authority than their elders, it probably felt downright Orwellian — a message further drummed into them by public-sector educators, the media and the opposition parties.

It also didn’t help that the Tories were beset by the Mike Duffy affair and other scandals, which tarnished the credibility of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Add to this the fact that the Tories had been in office nine years — in the case of first-time voters, half their lives — and it was no wonder that young voters were itching for change.

And in 2015, compared to 2011, change was readily apparent. Former NDP leader Jack Layton had more youthful appeal than former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Harper in 2011. But in 2015, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau presented an even starker contrast to both Harper and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. Trudeau was a decade younger and championed issues that resonated with youth voters, their experiences and their values, including abortion rights, loosened marijuana laws, the strength of diversity and “doing politics differently.”

For awhile, the other parties tried to play this to their advantage, assuming that standing beside their seasoned leaders, Trudeau would look like a schoolboy who was ill prepared for the job of prime minister. The Conservatives ran ads to this effect, portraying Trudeau as “not ready.” with employers saying that “prime minister is not an entry level job”. While the ads were seen as successful in the first half of the campaign, the “not-ready” rhetoric may have backfired with young voters on election day. At a seminar I gave last year at Concordia University on political marketing, one of the students remarked that she didn’t like the TV spots because job interviewers are always telling young people they aren’t ready for the positions and responsibilities they seek — a fact that made her more likely to vote for Trudeau.

And six months into Trudeau’s majority, they’d vote for him still. According to Abacus, 57 per cent approve of the government’s performance, 25 per cent neither approve nor disapprove and only 18 per cent disapprove.

So what does this mean for the opposition parties? At its recent convention, the NDP pinned its hopes on the Leap Manifesto, a rewriting of Das Kapital in environmental clothing tailored to a younger, greener demographic. The party also dumped Mulcair, paving the way for a leader who is not only less centrist, but of a different generation, as well.

As for the Conservatives, they also have youthful leadership candidates on offer — all the current aspirants are in their mid- to late-40s — but also the opportunity to make a longer-term change at their upcoming convention by establishing a national youth wing. Back in 2003, Reform elements purged the party of “special interests” that existed in the former Progressive Conservative party, including the youth wing. Unfortunately, this eliminated the “safe space” for the disruptive idealists a party needs to rejuvenate itself, in favour of the career politicians and staffers who see advantage in toeing the party line to advance their careers.

Unless they connect with millennials, the road ahead will be difficult for the opposition parties. Currently, more young people are prepared to vote Liberal than NDP or Tory. The other parties need to give them a reason to switch — not by bribing them with their own money, but by inspiring them and tapping into their values. For both the left and the right, this doesn’t mean abandoning their principles, but finding where they intersect with the future.

 

[runormal]

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/tasha-kheiriddin-in-the-2015-election-the-millennial-moment-arrived

The much ignored youth vote finally showed up on election day.

Perhaps going forward, they/we cannot just be written off because we don't vote.

And who knows, maybe the selfie voters will be courted by future leadership of all parties, not just the liberals.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next election. Anyone who was 21 or older on election day, won't be included in these statistics for the next election.  Like wise the 18-20 % vote is the lowest of the three.

But I was floored by the amount of posts I saw shared on social media encouraging youth to vote. So :dunno:

Edit:

I've attached my favourite goodies from the election.

Justin Trudeau Smacks Down Every Excuse Not To Vote In Vice Town Hall

"Don't kid yourself. If a young person doesn't vote, you are still voting," he said. "You've actually given a double vote to someone who is voting and may disagree with you."
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/09/justin-trudeau-voting_n_8271752.html

 

[PuckChaser]

Let's see if they show up for the next election. Once they get their dope and free university, they'll go back to not caring until someone mobilizes "evil Tories" memes again.

 

[George Wallace]

Let's see if they show up for the next election. Once they get their dope and free university, they'll go back to not caring until someone mobilizes "evil Tories" memes again.

Let's see if they become disillusioned with the Party they voted for, or perhaps research the historical trends of that Party.

 

[larry Strong]

An interesting article by Andrew Coyne along the lines of George's post.


Shared as per the Copyright act...

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-a-liberal-government-styled-by-dorian-gray

"A Liberal government styled by Dorian Gray"

Justin Trudeau is very much the face of this government, and why not? He is the Liberal franchise, and they know it. Other prime ministers might have preferred to ration their public appearances, for fear of overexposure. Not this one. He is everywhere, on every magazine cover, in every news cycle, opening this and announcing that, offering here a hug and there a Cook’s tour of quantum mechanics. Occasionally he even shows up in Parliament.

But while Trudeau, dimpled of smile and tousled of hair, seems the embodiment of eternal youth, his rapidly aging government is the portrait in the attic, on which all the lines and pockmarks of ethical decay are visited. The face on television may bespeak a commitment to idealism and honesty, transparency and fairness, but the government behind it has already amassed a record of cynicism, deception, secrecy and cronyism that for most governments would take years.

Take, as a current example, the Saudi arms deal. That the Liberals are willing to sell $15 billion worth of gun-mounted armoured vehicles to one of the world’s most repressive regimes may be put down to the exigencies of state: the Saudis are, after all, our allies, at least in the Middle Eastern sense of the word. That they did so in apparent violation of federal law may be dismissed as a matter of interpretation. Perhaps, as the government says, it would have been too costly to cancel the deal. Perhaps it would have been better never to have signed it.

But what is beyond dispute is that the decision to allow the deal to go ahead, including issuing the export permits without which it could not proceed, was entirely the Liberals’ doing. Yet until last week’s revelation of the minister of global Affairs’ recent decision to sign off on the permits, the Liberals had insisted the contract the Conservatives had bequeathed them was a fait accompli. This was generally understood to mean the export permits had already been issued.

In fairness, the Liberals never said they would cancel the deal, not even during the last election. That would distinguish this bit of dishonesty from the many things the Liberals did promise to do, or not to do, on which they have since reneged: the 25,000 Syrian refugees who were to have been admitted by December, the F-35s that were to have been ruled out of the bidding on a new fighter jet contract; the “combat mission” against ISIL that was to have been ended, not redefined; and of course the litany of broken promises in the budget, from the $10-billion ceiling on the deficit to the balanced budget by 2020 to the small business tax cut to the new health accord with the provinces (health spending is now projected to rise by less than it would have under the terms set out by the Harper government) and beyond.

Mind you, counting the number of broken promises in the budget depends in part on being able to decipher what’s in it. But as a number of commentators have noted, the budget sets new standards for opacity. The “fudge factor” built into revenue projections overstates the annual deficit by as much as $6 billion, twice as much as under the previous government. The failure to break out spending projections beyond two years, while nevertheless forecasting declining deficits over five, was likewise unprecedented. As for the claimed deficit of $5.4 billion in the last fiscal year under the Conservatives, notwithstanding a surplus of $4.3 billion after the first 10 months, that has now been comprehensively debunked by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

But these are within the ordinary limits, you may say, of political chicanery. Less so is Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould’s involvement in a private $500-a-plate fundraiser at a downtown Toronto law firm, whose invitees (the government has yet to disclose who they were) were pitched on the promise of special access to the minister. That the minister should have been so foolish as to attend, given the recent uproar over these sorts of pay-to-play events at the provincial level, may be put down to carelessness; that she should have done so, given the conflict-of-interest controversies she has encountered previously in her brief time in office — notably her husband’s efforts to lobby the government of which she is a part — suggests something more like recklessness.

But the defenses she and other Liberals have offered for her conduct — that she was just there as the MP for Vancouver-Granville, that so long as the rules did not expressly prohibit it there was no ethical issue, that opposition criticism was motivated by racism or sexism — are more redolent of a culture. And indeed the scent of money and expediency surrounds this government. Lobbyist activity, according to the Commissioner of Lobbying, is at an all-time high: nearly 3,000 communications in the month of February alone. Lobbyists with Liberal connections, from Don Boudria to David Pratt to former Trudeau campaign manager Louis-Alexandre Lanthier, feature prominently in the Hill Times’s annual Top 100 Lobbyists rankings, in what the magazine calls the biggest power shift among federal lobbyists since Jean Chrétien won power in 1993.

It won’t show up in the polls just yet: the public are still too enchanted with the face on the television. But away from the cameras the Liberals are building up a deficit of trust and ethics to match the fiscal deficit. It has been just six months since they were elected.

Cheers
Larry

 

[Remius]

Looks like Mike Duffy has had some 20 charges dismissed so far.

More to come but i think he's going to get off.

 

[brihard]

Curious to see how the afternoon goes. I feel like if they were going to blanket dismiss all charges they would have done so at the start with a sort of summary as to why, prior to getting to the specifics of each charge... I'm wondering if he isn't going to eat a few convictions out of the latter half?

 

[Old Sweat]

Curious to see how the afternoon goes. I feel like if they were going to blanket dismiss all charges they would have done so at the start with a sort of summary as to why, prior to getting to the specifics of each charge... I'm wondering if he isn't going to eat a few convictions out of the latter half?

That seems to be the tone of the speculation in the local media. One commentator noted that the judge has accepted as legitimate Senate business certain activities such as attending partisan political events that were condemned by the Auditor General in a scathing report a year or two back.

 

[Remius]

I'm sure that Mr. Brazeau Mr. Harb and Ms. Wallin are watching very very closely the outcomes of this.

 

[Rocky Mountains]

Not a lawyer but doesn't a fraud conviction require mens rea, a guilty mind.  If he follows the advice of others or uses past practices in an office where rules barely exist, it is hard to prove guilt.  On his PEI residency, clarity was provided by the Prime Minister, not a petty bureaucrat.  As I have said many times in this case, residency is where you say it is.

A lot of stuff was silly, like a 14 day western tour where he supposedly committed fraud by visiting his daughter is lame.  I think the media failed us in not reporting what a flimsy case the prosecution presented.  When the judge verbalizes it, it becomes obvious.  Mind you the main stream media was busy trying to unseat a government at the time so they weren't ready to let truth get in the way.

 

[ModlrMike]

...so they weren't aren't ready to let truth get in the way.

FTFY

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

I think he sub-text of the judge's decision so far is: "When, as politicians, it is your job to write the rules to which you wish to subject yourselves to and do a lousy job at it - with all the time in the world to do it right or correct it - don't come to the courts to then solve your political image problems arising from flimsy rules and your own lax application of them."

 

[Rocky Mountains]

I thought they might have had Duffy on the slush fund but - not guilty.  I suspect if the crown hadn't have done a 31 charge overkill, there might have been room to convict something there but I suspect the stench of malicious prosecution was getting a bit too overwhelming for the judge to handle.  Not guilty on all 31 charges.  Does Duffy get 2 years back bay for being suspended?  He should - with interest.

 

[Old Sweat]

Not guilty on all charges at 1527 EDT.

 

[Remius]

Glad this shyte show is over.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I figured the bugger would skate.  Shameful.

 

[The Bread Guy]

I figured the bugger would skate.  Shameful.

With how @#$%^&*'ed up the rules sound like they were, sadly, I'm not surprised.  I thought there might be a minor charge or two as a "technical fail", but not even that ...

That said, as some much smarter than me have said, just because something is legal and not against "the rules" doesn't mean it's right.

 

[a_majoor]

An interesting article by Andrew Coyne along the lines of George's post.


Shared as per the Copyright act...

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-a-liberal-government-styled-by-dorian-gray

"A Liberal government styled by Dorian Gray"

Wow, after the triumphalism of the "First 100 days", that didn't take long at all......


Cheers
Larry