Standalone project, part of Ready For Change, or a premonition into our near future...? Whatever it is, I'd love to see more.
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CanadianTory's Test Thread
- Thread starter CanadianTory
- Start date
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
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- The Loyalist Province
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- He/Him
One thing I'm planning on is doing a series of Alternate History book covers for my TL.
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Presidents of the United States
Former Vice President Richard Nixon of New York / Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland (Republican) 1969 - 1972
-68: Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota/Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine (Democratic), Former Governor George Wallace of Alabama/Ret. General Curtis LeMay of California (American Independent)
Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland / Vacant (Republican) 1972 - 1972
President Spiro Agnew of Maryland / Secretary Robert Finch of California (Republican) 1972 - 1974
-72: Senator George McGovern of South Dakota/Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut (Democratic)
Vice President Robert Finch of California / Vacant (Republican) 1974 - 1975
President Robert Finch of California / Senator Bob Dole of Kansas (Republican) 1975 - 1981
-76: Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington/Senator Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois (Democratic), Senator James L. Buckley of New York/Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina (Independent)
Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts / Senator Dick Clark of Iowa (Democratic) 1981 - 1989
-80: Former Governor Ronald Reagan of California/Former Ambassador Gerald Ford of Michigan (Republican), Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut/Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois (Independent)
-84: Former Vice President Bob Dole of Kansas/Representative Jack Kemp of New York (Republican)
Businessman Ross Perot of Texas / Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana (Republican) 1989 - 1993
-88: Vice President Dick Clark of Iowa/Senator Dianne Feinstein of California (Democratic)
Governor Bill Bradley of Missouri / Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York (Democratic) 1993 -
-92: President Ross Perot of Texas/Vice President Richard Lugar of Indiana (Republican)
-96: Former President Ross Perot of Texas/Former Senator John Danforth of Missouri (Republican)
All I got for now.
Former Vice President Richard Nixon of New York / Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland (Republican) 1969 - 1972
-68: Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota/Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine (Democratic), Former Governor George Wallace of Alabama/Ret. General Curtis LeMay of California (American Independent)
Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland / Vacant (Republican) 1972 - 1972
President Spiro Agnew of Maryland / Secretary Robert Finch of California (Republican) 1972 - 1974
-72: Senator George McGovern of South Dakota/Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut (Democratic)
Vice President Robert Finch of California / Vacant (Republican) 1974 - 1975
President Robert Finch of California / Senator Bob Dole of Kansas (Republican) 1975 - 1981
-76: Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington/Senator Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois (Democratic), Senator James L. Buckley of New York/Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina (Independent)
Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts / Senator Dick Clark of Iowa (Democratic) 1981 - 1989
-80: Former Governor Ronald Reagan of California/Former Ambassador Gerald Ford of Michigan (Republican), Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut/Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois (Independent)
-84: Former Vice President Bob Dole of Kansas/Representative Jack Kemp of New York (Republican)
Businessman Ross Perot of Texas / Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana (Republican) 1989 - 1993
-88: Vice President Dick Clark of Iowa/Senator Dianne Feinstein of California (Democratic)
Governor Bill Bradley of Missouri / Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York (Democratic) 1993 -
-92: President Ross Perot of Texas/Vice President Richard Lugar of Indiana (Republican)
-96: Former President Ross Perot of Texas/Former Senator John Danforth of Missouri (Republican)
All I got for now.
fanofeverything25
Well-known member
pod?
This is a nice touch - it’s perfectly believable, and like TLs that have Hillary Clinton stay in Arkansas it’d make him feel like a much different type of politician.
shearsforest
The Authentic Shears
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- Test Domain
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Looks like Nix bites the dust(?) or resigns in '72.
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
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- He/Him
Killed in Ottawa.
BigVic_1994
New member
What happens to Agnew?
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Forced to resign due to bribery scandals and whatnot. No doubt Republicans were looking for an excuse to get rid of him.
Ready for Change - Appendix 2.K (2019 Liberal Party of Canada leadership election)
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Liberals had experienced a weird couple of years. Way back in 2012, rather than let Bob Rae parlay the interim leadership into the permanent gig, the party rallied around a second generation Trudeau. He was bright, youthful, and carried with him a kind of natural Liberal energy that the last few leaders definitely lacked. Nobody ever expected Michael Ignatieff to impress Canadians with his socks (although to be fair no one ever asked to see them, so who knows what he was packing). If you listened to Justin Trudeau talk about policy, you'd be hard pressed to imagine him belonging to the same party as Jean Chretien. Chretien was a creature of the centre and had won three, back-to-back majority governments precisely because of it. He had allowed Free Trade to remain after campaigning against it. He and Paul Martin slashed and slashed every single department they could find until Canada was able to post its first surplus in decades. But Trudeau and his team appeared to recoil at the very notion of the political middle. Deficit spending, carbon taxes, bigger government. Basically anything that Stephen Harper did, Justin Trudeau proposed to do the opposite. All those big, structural differences with the NDP? All gone, with the hope that voters would side with sunny ways rather than the guy with a beard. According to the polls at the time, Canadians seemed receptive to it, and before anyone knew it Justin Trudeau sounded like a winner. He was going to sweep the country off its feet just like his dad and transform politics for the better.
Fast forward a couple of years, including two elections and a few blackface scandals, and Trudeau was out of a job. A Trudeau would now join the ranks of Stephane Dion, Michael Ignatieff, and Edward Blake as leaders of the Liberal Party of Canada who would never wind up as Prime Minister. It was a massive embarrassment to his father's legacy, to whom he was its keeper, and an even deeper disappointment for the Liberal Party. Eight years on from that disastrous, third-place showing in the 2011 election, and the Liberals were still in third-place. What was the point in being a Liberal if not holding power? Without that power, what did the party actually stand for?
Did voters even care what they stood for anymore?
Merging with the New Democrats had been floated as an idea almost the second after all the votes were counted in 2011. Hell, it had been popping up ever since the ill-fated coalition agreement between Stephane Dion and Jack Layton (With Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois in attendance) had been signed back in December 2008. Journalists and pundits who lived in the Ottawa-bubble would salivate at the idea of this mythical, untested, complex, and likely-to-fail creation. Chretien might be in favour of it. Ed Broadbent too. Lock them in a room together with a bottle of brandy and let them hash out the details. But that was back in the days when Stephen Harper was the common enemy. There wasn't much of an argument for the NDP, the incumbent government, to join forces with a party that many of its members detested (Years of being mocked and getting looked down by the Liberals will do that to you). Mulcair had publicly ruled out both a merger or co-operation, citing the collapse of the coalition in early 2009. NDP MP Ryan Cleary had publicly mused that if any Liberal MP was interested in joining the party, they'd have to resign from parliament and run in the ensuing by-election under the NDP banner. Floor-crossings to the government were not permitted and merging was out of the question.
That was not to say that there was zero appetite for a merger. Pat Martin, who had been forced to resign from cabinet because of accusations of sexual harassment, had long been in favor of a merger between the NDP and the Liberals. Finance Minister Nathan Cullen, back when he was a leadership candidate to replace the late Jack Layton, won around twenty-four percent of his party's convention vote based on the premise of cooperation with the Liberals. Not enough to make any of this a reality, but enough to suggest that there was a market for it in some corners of the party. The biggest obstacle still remained the hope within Liberal Party member's heart that they were just one election away from being swept back into power, and Mark Carney was drawing people to the big red tent.
The former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor had long been touted as a possible leadership candidate, despite his repeated claims of having little-to-no interest in getting involved in electoral politics (they all say that). The first such "Carneymania" frenzy happened in 2012, shortly after Bob Rae announced that he would not seek the job he had lusted after since ditching the NDP in favour of the Liberals seven years earlier. Instead of challenging Justin Trudeau, Carney departed for England to take up the position of Governor of the Bank of England, the first Canadian to hold the gig. The whole international-mandarin-class could barely hide their disappointment. He survived the tumultuous (and ongoing) Brexit crisis, and while it destroyed political careers in the UK, it provided Carney with the opportunity to not only further raise his profile on the world stage but build up a thicker skin needed for electoral politics back home. From across the Atlantic, as Trudeau flustered and floundered from scandal to scandal, Liberals could only look on with envy. Apparently the feeling was at least somewhat mutual, since Carney was taking calls from senior Liberals back home about everything from the party's fundraising numbers to Trudeau's state of mind. Of course when such information leaked to the press, as it always does, Carney was ready with his reply; he takes calls from everyone, and is prepared to give advice if people want it. So when he finally ended his stint in England and returned home to launch his leadership bid, it was obviously done because not enough people in the party were taking that advice. Ambition? Nope, just a desire to be of service. Cue the campaign slogans and aw-shucks grins.
But not everyone was happy at the thought of a bureaucrat with zero elected political experience taking the reigns of Canada's once great natural governing party. Carney's star has risen outside of the party and its culture, which has only grown more clannish than it had been during the Chretien-Martin days. Although desperate for solutions, there are many within the party who have zero tolerance for any criticism or thoughtful critique. Carney's leadership launch pointily criticized, without naming names, the growing out-of-touch nature of the Liberal Party. Besides, could someone as politically inexperienced as Mark Carney be the type of candidate to catapult the Liberals from third to first? It was a legitimate concern, even amongst some of his admirers. To his detractors, Carney's centrist and admittedly centre-right credentials made him on odd fit for a party where the centre-left was more and more on the ascend. Calls were being made to recruit a candidate who could actually give Carney a run for his money, which he had a lot of.
Jean Charest, the former Quebec Premier who led the dying federal Progressive Conservative Party from 1993 until 1998, politely declined calls from senior Liberals (including Jean Chretien) to seek the Liberal leadership. As the case for Charest went, his candidacy would reinvigorate the party's prospects in Quebec, challenging the NDP's iron hold on the province. Instead, sources close to Charest had indicated that the former Quebec Premier was more interested in seeking the Tory leadership when it inevitably opened up after Jason Kenney lost in the next election and stepped down. Although Charest would need to get around former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's inevitable opposition to make such a bid even remotely viable.
Toronto Mayor John Tory, another name associated with the Progressive Conservative brand, was also on the lips of some pretty senior Liberals. Surveys showed that Tory registered quite high with Liberal voters, especially among those who had helped propel him to an easy re-election victory over former councilor Doug Ford. But Tory was clearly enjoying being mayor of Canada's largest city, and was apparently still holding out hope that the Ontario PCs, struggling with a minority under Vic Fedeli, would come crawling back to him and make him Premier.
François-Philippe Champagne? As the highest profile Liberal still standing in Quebec (There were six MPs in total) he was fielding calls from both federal and provincial Liberals eager for his economic credentials. But while Champagne was happy getting the attention, he admitted to those close to him he lacked the financial backers to take on someone of Mark Carney's stature. Former MP Chrystia Freeland, a once rising star who had been narrowly defeated for re-election in the NDP's march through downtown Toronto, was taking her own calls, in this case from former leader Justin Trudeau and his former top aid Gerald Butts. But Freeland was getting back into journalist and international politics, and was also negotiating behind the scenes with Prime Minister Mulcair and his people to be Canada's next ambassador to the United Nations. Like Tory, former Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was also fielding requests to throw his hat into the ring, but he was too busy organizing for Mark Carney against fellow BCers Joyce Murray and Taleeb Noormohamed.
More polite no's to the unofficial "Anybody but Carney" campaign.
But suspense in politics is overrated. Mark Carney's first-ballot victory was virtually guaranteed from the outset, especially when his most credible opponent was an also-ran from the previous leadership race. With over fifty percent of the convention vote, the scale of Carney's win meant that at least until after the next election, his word was law. His authority would be uncontested. His opponents would either get on board or have to start updating their resumes and begin lining up jobs outside of elected politics. Want a merger with the New Democrats? Go run in a by-election for them.
By the time Carney got to the podium, Liberals were begging for a reassuring, no-nonsense presence. That's exactly what they got. Namechecking party luminaries like Lous St. Laurent and Lester Pearson (two leaders with deep ties to Canada's bureaucracy), Mark Carney's speech could be best described as bland and straight to the point. A far cry from his predecessor, but that was exactly the point and part of the deal when it came to Mark Carney. There was some language about Canada reaching for its full environmental potential, maybe through a federally mandated carbon tax, and a stronger presence on the world stage, but observers could be forgiven for thinking they were listening to a speech being delivered by the current occupant of the PMO. Yet again, the Liberal Party was banking on the star power of their leader to paper over the cracks. Yes, there wasn't a whole range of differences between the Liberal leader and the Prime Minister, but Mark Carney had helped guide Canada's banks through the Great Recession and had nabbed some pretty good international headlines for the country while he was abroad. He was the favourite son who had gone and made a name for himself out in the real world. Surely voters would be willing to trust the keys to 24 Sussex to someone with that kind of resume than the guy who had accidentally gotten himself elected and re-elected.
Ask any Liberals and they'd just keep saying the same thing; the NDP hadn't won the last two elections, the Liberal Party had blown them. That wouldn't happen a third time.
Two years out from the next scheduled election and the Liberals were ahead in the polls again, thirty-three percent to the Tories twenty-eight. The incumbents were at twenty-seven. Not great for the government, but still plenty of time to turn things around. In some polls Brian Mulroney trailed as bad as third place before romping to a second straight majority in 1988. For the time being though it looked like swing voters and soft-Liberals were willing the lend the party their stamp of approval again. They'd done the same for Trudeau. Now it was Carney's turn.
Fast forward a couple of years, including two elections and a few blackface scandals, and Trudeau was out of a job. A Trudeau would now join the ranks of Stephane Dion, Michael Ignatieff, and Edward Blake as leaders of the Liberal Party of Canada who would never wind up as Prime Minister. It was a massive embarrassment to his father's legacy, to whom he was its keeper, and an even deeper disappointment for the Liberal Party. Eight years on from that disastrous, third-place showing in the 2011 election, and the Liberals were still in third-place. What was the point in being a Liberal if not holding power? Without that power, what did the party actually stand for?
Did voters even care what they stood for anymore?
Merging with the New Democrats had been floated as an idea almost the second after all the votes were counted in 2011. Hell, it had been popping up ever since the ill-fated coalition agreement between Stephane Dion and Jack Layton (With Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois in attendance) had been signed back in December 2008. Journalists and pundits who lived in the Ottawa-bubble would salivate at the idea of this mythical, untested, complex, and likely-to-fail creation. Chretien might be in favour of it. Ed Broadbent too. Lock them in a room together with a bottle of brandy and let them hash out the details. But that was back in the days when Stephen Harper was the common enemy. There wasn't much of an argument for the NDP, the incumbent government, to join forces with a party that many of its members detested (Years of being mocked and getting looked down by the Liberals will do that to you). Mulcair had publicly ruled out both a merger or co-operation, citing the collapse of the coalition in early 2009. NDP MP Ryan Cleary had publicly mused that if any Liberal MP was interested in joining the party, they'd have to resign from parliament and run in the ensuing by-election under the NDP banner. Floor-crossings to the government were not permitted and merging was out of the question.
That was not to say that there was zero appetite for a merger. Pat Martin, who had been forced to resign from cabinet because of accusations of sexual harassment, had long been in favor of a merger between the NDP and the Liberals. Finance Minister Nathan Cullen, back when he was a leadership candidate to replace the late Jack Layton, won around twenty-four percent of his party's convention vote based on the premise of cooperation with the Liberals. Not enough to make any of this a reality, but enough to suggest that there was a market for it in some corners of the party. The biggest obstacle still remained the hope within Liberal Party member's heart that they were just one election away from being swept back into power, and Mark Carney was drawing people to the big red tent.
The former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor had long been touted as a possible leadership candidate, despite his repeated claims of having little-to-no interest in getting involved in electoral politics (they all say that). The first such "Carneymania" frenzy happened in 2012, shortly after Bob Rae announced that he would not seek the job he had lusted after since ditching the NDP in favour of the Liberals seven years earlier. Instead of challenging Justin Trudeau, Carney departed for England to take up the position of Governor of the Bank of England, the first Canadian to hold the gig. The whole international-mandarin-class could barely hide their disappointment. He survived the tumultuous (and ongoing) Brexit crisis, and while it destroyed political careers in the UK, it provided Carney with the opportunity to not only further raise his profile on the world stage but build up a thicker skin needed for electoral politics back home. From across the Atlantic, as Trudeau flustered and floundered from scandal to scandal, Liberals could only look on with envy. Apparently the feeling was at least somewhat mutual, since Carney was taking calls from senior Liberals back home about everything from the party's fundraising numbers to Trudeau's state of mind. Of course when such information leaked to the press, as it always does, Carney was ready with his reply; he takes calls from everyone, and is prepared to give advice if people want it. So when he finally ended his stint in England and returned home to launch his leadership bid, it was obviously done because not enough people in the party were taking that advice. Ambition? Nope, just a desire to be of service. Cue the campaign slogans and aw-shucks grins.
But not everyone was happy at the thought of a bureaucrat with zero elected political experience taking the reigns of Canada's once great natural governing party. Carney's star has risen outside of the party and its culture, which has only grown more clannish than it had been during the Chretien-Martin days. Although desperate for solutions, there are many within the party who have zero tolerance for any criticism or thoughtful critique. Carney's leadership launch pointily criticized, without naming names, the growing out-of-touch nature of the Liberal Party. Besides, could someone as politically inexperienced as Mark Carney be the type of candidate to catapult the Liberals from third to first? It was a legitimate concern, even amongst some of his admirers. To his detractors, Carney's centrist and admittedly centre-right credentials made him on odd fit for a party where the centre-left was more and more on the ascend. Calls were being made to recruit a candidate who could actually give Carney a run for his money, which he had a lot of.
Jean Charest, the former Quebec Premier who led the dying federal Progressive Conservative Party from 1993 until 1998, politely declined calls from senior Liberals (including Jean Chretien) to seek the Liberal leadership. As the case for Charest went, his candidacy would reinvigorate the party's prospects in Quebec, challenging the NDP's iron hold on the province. Instead, sources close to Charest had indicated that the former Quebec Premier was more interested in seeking the Tory leadership when it inevitably opened up after Jason Kenney lost in the next election and stepped down. Although Charest would need to get around former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's inevitable opposition to make such a bid even remotely viable.
Toronto Mayor John Tory, another name associated with the Progressive Conservative brand, was also on the lips of some pretty senior Liberals. Surveys showed that Tory registered quite high with Liberal voters, especially among those who had helped propel him to an easy re-election victory over former councilor Doug Ford. But Tory was clearly enjoying being mayor of Canada's largest city, and was apparently still holding out hope that the Ontario PCs, struggling with a minority under Vic Fedeli, would come crawling back to him and make him Premier.
François-Philippe Champagne? As the highest profile Liberal still standing in Quebec (There were six MPs in total) he was fielding calls from both federal and provincial Liberals eager for his economic credentials. But while Champagne was happy getting the attention, he admitted to those close to him he lacked the financial backers to take on someone of Mark Carney's stature. Former MP Chrystia Freeland, a once rising star who had been narrowly defeated for re-election in the NDP's march through downtown Toronto, was taking her own calls, in this case from former leader Justin Trudeau and his former top aid Gerald Butts. But Freeland was getting back into journalist and international politics, and was also negotiating behind the scenes with Prime Minister Mulcair and his people to be Canada's next ambassador to the United Nations. Like Tory, former Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was also fielding requests to throw his hat into the ring, but he was too busy organizing for Mark Carney against fellow BCers Joyce Murray and Taleeb Noormohamed.
More polite no's to the unofficial "Anybody but Carney" campaign.
By the time Carney got to the podium, Liberals were begging for a reassuring, no-nonsense presence. That's exactly what they got. Namechecking party luminaries like Lous St. Laurent and Lester Pearson (two leaders with deep ties to Canada's bureaucracy), Mark Carney's speech could be best described as bland and straight to the point. A far cry from his predecessor, but that was exactly the point and part of the deal when it came to Mark Carney. There was some language about Canada reaching for its full environmental potential, maybe through a federally mandated carbon tax, and a stronger presence on the world stage, but observers could be forgiven for thinking they were listening to a speech being delivered by the current occupant of the PMO. Yet again, the Liberal Party was banking on the star power of their leader to paper over the cracks. Yes, there wasn't a whole range of differences between the Liberal leader and the Prime Minister, but Mark Carney had helped guide Canada's banks through the Great Recession and had nabbed some pretty good international headlines for the country while he was abroad. He was the favourite son who had gone and made a name for himself out in the real world. Surely voters would be willing to trust the keys to 24 Sussex to someone with that kind of resume than the guy who had accidentally gotten himself elected and re-elected.
Ask any Liberals and they'd just keep saying the same thing; the NDP hadn't won the last two elections, the Liberal Party had blown them. That wouldn't happen a third time.
Two years out from the next scheduled election and the Liberals were ahead in the polls again, thirty-three percent to the Tories twenty-eight. The incumbents were at twenty-seven. Not great for the government, but still plenty of time to turn things around. In some polls Brian Mulroney trailed as bad as third place before romping to a second straight majority in 1988. For the time being though it looked like swing voters and soft-Liberals were willing the lend the party their stamp of approval again. They'd done the same for Trudeau. Now it was Carney's turn.
Ready for Change - 2.L (December 2019 First Minister's Meeting)
New
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
First minster's meetings are a Conservative invention. Although Wilfred Laurier was the first to assemble the country's Premiers in 1906, it wouldn't be until R.B. Bennett, elected in 1930, that it was made a regular practice. During Bennett's five-year premiership he hosted the Premier's on four separate occasions, each time trying to entice the provinces to cede direct control of the economy to the federal government in exchange for higher transfer payments. It was the Great Depression and the federal government was desperate to turn things around. Each time the Premier's said no, and by 1935 Canadians decided that they'd had enough of Bennett and brought back William Lyon Mackenzie King. By the end of his eleven years Mackenzie King had four conferences. Louis St. Laurent had six in his nine years. Lester B. Pearson nine in five years. Between them, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney had thirty-seven. Thank their government's constitutional shenanigans for that deluge of meetings.
When Stephen Harper was in power the Premiers began calling themselves the Council of the Federation, a lofty name for a group that would meet without the Prime Minister, since Harper had no real interest in meeting with them. He was a Conservative after all, and wanted the federal government to do a lot less, not more. He was also a control freak and tried to avoid situations where he was outnumbered by his opponents as much as possible. That meant the Premiers, who believed it was the federal government's job to dole out money for whatever project they had in mind, would meet without the one person to whom they all needed to meet with. Not exactly a recipe for success.
Fast forward to 2019 and Tom Mulcair was clearly wishing he had followed Stephen Harper's example and avoided these things like the plague. It was awkward considering candidate Mulcair had campaigned in 2015 on the explicit promise to hold two meetings with the Premiers per year, one in Ottawa and one in a province or territory on a rotating basis. four months after taking office Prime Minister Mulcair held his first meeting, on pension reforms, but nothing aside from a joint commitment to hold more meetings on the issue in the future. A second meeting a few months after that yielded the same results. Photo-ops and handshakes ensued and journalists raved that it was a return to the good old days. Nothing was getting done, but it at least it looked like it was. As with all Prime Ministers uniformity was the goal. If they couldn't agree on a solution, at least they could all agree they'd keep looking for one. The federation was healing!
Trouble was that when he had a minority government, there really wasn't a lot that Tom Mulcair could do at those meetings. If anything his meet ups with the Premiers began to look an awful lot like the one's that Paul Martin had. Those were more muggings than any serene exchange of views between the participants. Push for provinces to either adopt the NDP's cap-and-trade carbon pricing scheme or come up with their own plan? Yeah, the Premiers would reply, we'll get right on that. Smile for the journalists and boast that real substantive discussions were happening, and that everyone was moving forward in a constructive, collaborative manner. Everyone would then retreat back to their corner of the country, move on with their lives, and then meet up again the following year. Rinse and repeat.
But now that he had a majority government, Mulcair held all the cards. He could walk into those meetings and tell the Premiers what was going to happen. They'd either have to get serious on carbon pricing or have it force on them. Senate reform discussions would finally happen, whether Premiers Legault or Fedeli liked it. The country could finally have those grand discussions between leaders where actual debates could occur and Mulcair, like Pierre Trudeau did in the latter's 1982 meetings on constitutional repatriation and the Charter of Rights, could score a big win. Goodness knows he needed one. Even those around the Prime Minister acknowledged that since capturing a majority for his party in 2017, he had been tepid to use it. At only 176 seats, it wasn't exactly stable. Even worse, in the years since the election, the NDP had seen their already minor majority shrink even further.
Controversial Quebec MP Hans Marotte, a lawyer and former avowed separatist, had gained notoriety in 2015 for his Pro-Palestinian views. The fact that Marotte chose to cross-the-floor to the Bloc Quebecois only a few months after getting re-elected as a member of the New Democrats apparently did little to calm the Prime Minister's nerves. Former International Trade Minister Paul Dewar died from cancer in early 2019. They lost the seat to the federal Liberals in the ensuing by-election. Scarborough MP K.M. Shanthikumar found out that being against gay-marriage and abortion in a party that prides itself on supporting gay-marriage and abortion made for an untenable relationship, and he got the boot. Pat Martin, the blunt and straight talking veteran's minister, was forced to resign from cabinet due to some rather outdated language used around female staffers. He was still a member of the party for the time being, but his feelings about being left out in the cold by the Prime Minister's Office were obvious, and there was potential he could cause the government problems. Then there were the rumours that Finance Minister Nathan Cullen was poised to jump ship and replace John Horgan as leader of the BC NDP in time for the 2020 provincial election. Horgan had been diagnosed with throat cancer only months earlier and had indicated his reluctance to seek re-election.
By the time Tom Mulcair walked into his last First Minister's Conference of 2019, the government was down to only 173 MPs. With Svend Robinson and his Community Group faction nipping at his heals, there wasn't a lot of room for maneuvering. The Premier's knew it too. Even worse, a lot of the faces sitting around the negotiating table were looking a lot more conservative than they did when Mulcair first became Prime Minister. Kathleen Wynne, Philippe Couillard, Stephen McNeil, Greg Selinger, Wade McLaughlin, Rachel Notley, and Dwight Ball were now gone, replaced by politicians even less inclined to help out the federal government. Heck, some of them had gotten elected by specifically pledging to stand up to Tom Mulcair and his party.
Richard Gotfried, Alberta's temporary Premier while Brian Jean was busy running for the leadership of the freshly created United Conservatives, had already issued a public statement that Alberta would not, under any circumstances, impose a carbon tax on its voters. He also announced that Alberta would launch a legal challenge against the government's continued refusal to appoint Senators. Nova Scotia's Peter MacKay, Saskatchewan's Ken Cheveldayoff, Manitoba's Brian Pallister, Ontario's Vic Fedeli, and Newfoundland's Ches Crosbie, also signed on to the declaration. As the argument went, the government was threatening national unity by simultaneously blocking the province's representation in the Senate and imposing a carbon scheme that infringed on provincial sovereignty. Obviously the line on sovereignty was crap, since the federal government did indeed have those powers. Even if it didn't, it could just invoke the notwithstanding clause (although realistically that option was already off the table). But the argument on the Senate was a lot more potent. New Democrats had long pledged not to appoint anyone to the upper chamber while they negotiated with the provinces to abolish the chamber. Several legal scholars questioned the legality of that. Conservatives held a plurality in the upper chamber, meaning that if they wanted to they could grind the government's legislative agenda to a halt. The idea of a bunch of unelected politicians blocking elected politicians from doing their job wasn't exactly something the Tories were eager to champion. Jason Kenney clearly preferred beating Mulcair at the ballot box like a normal person would. But the threat was still there. Sort of.
Only New Brunswick's Brian Gallant, Prince Edward Island's Dennis King, and Francois Legault appeared open to meeting their federally mandated requirements. Quebec was exempt from the carbon pricing scheme since it was already in an agreement with California designed to reduce carbon emissions, so it didn't matter to Legault. He was more interested in getting some more powers for Quebec. Gallant received cover from Mark Carney and the federal Liberals who had endorsed carbon pricing since before 2015. Dennis King seemed open to just about anything if it meant working with people from across the political spectrum. PEI had already passed a Green-sponsored bill to lower emissions by forty-three percent compared to 2005 levels. Unlike some of his centre-right colleagues, Premier King believed in the threat of man-made climate change, and supported taking action. So long as it didn't punish the good people of Prince Edward Island.
(As of December 31st, 2019)
[Feel free to point out any mistakes if you notice them]
Nothing ended up getting decided. Sure, there was the drama that journalists enjoy writing about and some veiled insults were hurled by the Premiers and some over-eager staffers. Apparently someone from the PMO said that Saskatchewan's Cheveldayoff opposed the carbon pricing scheme because it used too many big words for him to even understand it. That unforced error resulted in Mulcair personally apologizing to someone who was leading the charge against a policy he was hinging his political career on. Humiliating would be an understatement according to NDP MPs, many of whom agreed with the staffer and said so on Twitter.
In between the smiles and photos, one couldn't help but wonder what Tom Mulcair was thinking. Maybe the Prime Minister was thinking that Stephen Harper was right after all. If nobody was interested in getting anything accomplished in these meetings, maybe nobody would get an invitation to the next one and everyone could save some money and grandstand from home.
When Stephen Harper was in power the Premiers began calling themselves the Council of the Federation, a lofty name for a group that would meet without the Prime Minister, since Harper had no real interest in meeting with them. He was a Conservative after all, and wanted the federal government to do a lot less, not more. He was also a control freak and tried to avoid situations where he was outnumbered by his opponents as much as possible. That meant the Premiers, who believed it was the federal government's job to dole out money for whatever project they had in mind, would meet without the one person to whom they all needed to meet with. Not exactly a recipe for success.
Fast forward to 2019 and Tom Mulcair was clearly wishing he had followed Stephen Harper's example and avoided these things like the plague. It was awkward considering candidate Mulcair had campaigned in 2015 on the explicit promise to hold two meetings with the Premiers per year, one in Ottawa and one in a province or territory on a rotating basis. four months after taking office Prime Minister Mulcair held his first meeting, on pension reforms, but nothing aside from a joint commitment to hold more meetings on the issue in the future. A second meeting a few months after that yielded the same results. Photo-ops and handshakes ensued and journalists raved that it was a return to the good old days. Nothing was getting done, but it at least it looked like it was. As with all Prime Ministers uniformity was the goal. If they couldn't agree on a solution, at least they could all agree they'd keep looking for one. The federation was healing!
Trouble was that when he had a minority government, there really wasn't a lot that Tom Mulcair could do at those meetings. If anything his meet ups with the Premiers began to look an awful lot like the one's that Paul Martin had. Those were more muggings than any serene exchange of views between the participants. Push for provinces to either adopt the NDP's cap-and-trade carbon pricing scheme or come up with their own plan? Yeah, the Premiers would reply, we'll get right on that. Smile for the journalists and boast that real substantive discussions were happening, and that everyone was moving forward in a constructive, collaborative manner. Everyone would then retreat back to their corner of the country, move on with their lives, and then meet up again the following year. Rinse and repeat.
But now that he had a majority government, Mulcair held all the cards. He could walk into those meetings and tell the Premiers what was going to happen. They'd either have to get serious on carbon pricing or have it force on them. Senate reform discussions would finally happen, whether Premiers Legault or Fedeli liked it. The country could finally have those grand discussions between leaders where actual debates could occur and Mulcair, like Pierre Trudeau did in the latter's 1982 meetings on constitutional repatriation and the Charter of Rights, could score a big win. Goodness knows he needed one. Even those around the Prime Minister acknowledged that since capturing a majority for his party in 2017, he had been tepid to use it. At only 176 seats, it wasn't exactly stable. Even worse, in the years since the election, the NDP had seen their already minor majority shrink even further.
Controversial Quebec MP Hans Marotte, a lawyer and former avowed separatist, had gained notoriety in 2015 for his Pro-Palestinian views. The fact that Marotte chose to cross-the-floor to the Bloc Quebecois only a few months after getting re-elected as a member of the New Democrats apparently did little to calm the Prime Minister's nerves. Former International Trade Minister Paul Dewar died from cancer in early 2019. They lost the seat to the federal Liberals in the ensuing by-election. Scarborough MP K.M. Shanthikumar found out that being against gay-marriage and abortion in a party that prides itself on supporting gay-marriage and abortion made for an untenable relationship, and he got the boot. Pat Martin, the blunt and straight talking veteran's minister, was forced to resign from cabinet due to some rather outdated language used around female staffers. He was still a member of the party for the time being, but his feelings about being left out in the cold by the Prime Minister's Office were obvious, and there was potential he could cause the government problems. Then there were the rumours that Finance Minister Nathan Cullen was poised to jump ship and replace John Horgan as leader of the BC NDP in time for the 2020 provincial election. Horgan had been diagnosed with throat cancer only months earlier and had indicated his reluctance to seek re-election.
By the time Tom Mulcair walked into his last First Minister's Conference of 2019, the government was down to only 173 MPs. With Svend Robinson and his Community Group faction nipping at his heals, there wasn't a lot of room for maneuvering. The Premier's knew it too. Even worse, a lot of the faces sitting around the negotiating table were looking a lot more conservative than they did when Mulcair first became Prime Minister. Kathleen Wynne, Philippe Couillard, Stephen McNeil, Greg Selinger, Wade McLaughlin, Rachel Notley, and Dwight Ball were now gone, replaced by politicians even less inclined to help out the federal government. Heck, some of them had gotten elected by specifically pledging to stand up to Tom Mulcair and his party.
Richard Gotfried, Alberta's temporary Premier while Brian Jean was busy running for the leadership of the freshly created United Conservatives, had already issued a public statement that Alberta would not, under any circumstances, impose a carbon tax on its voters. He also announced that Alberta would launch a legal challenge against the government's continued refusal to appoint Senators. Nova Scotia's Peter MacKay, Saskatchewan's Ken Cheveldayoff, Manitoba's Brian Pallister, Ontario's Vic Fedeli, and Newfoundland's Ches Crosbie, also signed on to the declaration. As the argument went, the government was threatening national unity by simultaneously blocking the province's representation in the Senate and imposing a carbon scheme that infringed on provincial sovereignty. Obviously the line on sovereignty was crap, since the federal government did indeed have those powers. Even if it didn't, it could just invoke the notwithstanding clause (although realistically that option was already off the table). But the argument on the Senate was a lot more potent. New Democrats had long pledged not to appoint anyone to the upper chamber while they negotiated with the provinces to abolish the chamber. Several legal scholars questioned the legality of that. Conservatives held a plurality in the upper chamber, meaning that if they wanted to they could grind the government's legislative agenda to a halt. The idea of a bunch of unelected politicians blocking elected politicians from doing their job wasn't exactly something the Tories were eager to champion. Jason Kenney clearly preferred beating Mulcair at the ballot box like a normal person would. But the threat was still there. Sort of.
Only New Brunswick's Brian Gallant, Prince Edward Island's Dennis King, and Francois Legault appeared open to meeting their federally mandated requirements. Quebec was exempt from the carbon pricing scheme since it was already in an agreement with California designed to reduce carbon emissions, so it didn't matter to Legault. He was more interested in getting some more powers for Quebec. Gallant received cover from Mark Carney and the federal Liberals who had endorsed carbon pricing since before 2015. Dennis King seemed open to just about anything if it meant working with people from across the political spectrum. PEI had already passed a Green-sponsored bill to lower emissions by forty-three percent compared to 2005 levels. Unlike some of his centre-right colleagues, Premier King believed in the threat of man-made climate change, and supported taking action. So long as it didn't punish the good people of Prince Edward Island.
(As of December 31st, 2019)
[Feel free to point out any mistakes if you notice them]
Nothing ended up getting decided. Sure, there was the drama that journalists enjoy writing about and some veiled insults were hurled by the Premiers and some over-eager staffers. Apparently someone from the PMO said that Saskatchewan's Cheveldayoff opposed the carbon pricing scheme because it used too many big words for him to even understand it. That unforced error resulted in Mulcair personally apologizing to someone who was leading the charge against a policy he was hinging his political career on. Humiliating would be an understatement according to NDP MPs, many of whom agreed with the staffer and said so on Twitter.
In between the smiles and photos, one couldn't help but wonder what Tom Mulcair was thinking. Maybe the Prime Minister was thinking that Stephen Harper was right after all. If nobody was interested in getting anything accomplished in these meetings, maybe nobody would get an invitation to the next one and everyone could save some money and grandstand from home.
Ready for Change - Appendix 2.M (29th Canadian Ministry - April 12th, 2020)
New
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Staffers, even the disgruntled ones who believed Mulcair should've been more aggressive from the start, had begun to speak morosely of the early years of "Orange Ottawa", as it had been dubbed. With the election of Canada's first ever New Democratic government, there was a sense that anything was possible. Maybe Canadians really had turned the page on the divisive politics of Stephen Harper. Maybe Canada was about to change for the better. Weed was legalized and the Canadian Pension Plan had been expanded. Keystone XL was dead and the government was implementing a federal carbon pricing scheme of some sorts, even if they were allowing the provinces to opt out. Billions were being put aside for new public transit spending. For all the limitations of being a minority government, these were still serious and meaningful accomplishments.
In recent years, however, things had grown frustrating.
For instance, the government was embroiled in a bitter cold war between Mulcair's more moderate faction and Svend Robinson's proudly socialist cohorts. A former fixture of the NDP's left flank, Robinson had found his way back into the House of Commons in the 2017 election, and had quickly got back to his roots. That meant setting up a party within the party and using the government's unstable majority to his advantage. He wouldn't bring down the government, but the option was always on the table. Mulcair, ever the cautious politician, only grew more cautious. The Prime Minister's backers, like policy advisors Anders Rasmussen and Rosa Kouri in the PMO, only got more bitter and angry at what they viewed as a threat to the boss. Not exactly a situation that breeds trust.
Then there was the scandal involving then-Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Appointed in December 2017, Turpel-Lafond, who claimed Cree ancestry, had previously been Saskatchewan's first Indigenous justice. Now she was Canada's first Indigenous member of the Supreme Court. For a country still struggling with its relationship with the Indigenous community, and still coming to terms with how to handle it, such an appointment was wildly applauded across the political and legal landscape. By February 2019, however, reports had begun emerging suggesting that Turpel-Lafond wasn't actually Indigenous, unleashing a firestorm of controversy and dividing members of the government. Justice Minister Craig Scott initially suggested that the government had done its due diligence and completed an extensive background check into her history. A few weeks later as the controversy intensified, Scott backtracked those comments, telling the House of Commons that if anything had been missed the blame was shared by members of the ad hoc committee of members of Parliament responsible for such appointments. Forget about the buck stopping with the Prime Minister, who ultimately got the final say in the appointment, here was the Justice Minister saying everyone was at fault. Backbench MPs, already fearful of worsening poll numbers, wanted Turpel-Lafond out. Mulcair, not wanting to appear guilty of gross incompetence, wanted more time to conduct a full investigation. A month after the initial reports, Justice Turpel-Lafond announced her resignation. She was receiving calls to resign from those close to her and return her countless awards and honors and just wasn't interested in further participating in what she labeled a media witch-hunt. Although the resignation prevented matters from getting worse for the government, those close to Mulcair said that the ordeal had rattled the Prime Minister and his trust in a great number of MPs.
Polling companies had started asking Canadians whether or not Mulcair should lead his party into the next election, and whether the Supreme Court debacle had fatally damaged him. Mark Carney and the Liberals were leading in the polls, with Jason Kenney and the Tories second and the NDP a not-too-distant third. It wasn't the first time the NDP had found themselves in such a position, nor the first time questions like that had been asked. However, It was the first time since winning a majority government that people had begun asking what a post-Mulcair NDP would look like. It was a lesson in loyalty for Mulcair. So long as he was a winner he'd have the party behind him. If he didn't, they'd start looking elsewhere.
Svend Robinson meanwhile was trying to evoke Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senator who had given President Clinton a run for her money in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. The BC MP's call to combat climate change, to fight inequality and tax the rich were a more galvanizing message to party members than whatever Mulcair and his office were doing at the moment.
Fast forward several months later and the scandals were forgotten. Fears over COVID-19 had replaced people's concerns over the ancestry some judge had claimed to have and when. Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, had at first urged Canadians to be vigilant, but not panic. She advised the government not to have Canadians returning from international travel to isolate, even going as far as to strongly advise against wearing masks for fear of transferring any possible virus from their hands to areas around their mouth and eyes (Unlike Anthony Fauci in the United States, Tam wasn't an independent official and had to be onside of the government of the day). The country was a lot better positioned than it had been during the SARS health crisis more than a decade earlier, and Canada would simply take the steps advised by the World Health Organization. Instead of curtailing the virus, by the end of March 2020 Canadians saw their healthcare system, like countless other nations around the globe, pushed to the brink, their schools closed, and lockdowns become the norm. Even the House of Commons wasn't immune, and in-person questions were scuttled. A novel virus had become a global health emergency and a once-in-a-life crisis.
Perhaps cynically, such a crisis presented an opportunity for the New Democrats to change the channel. Prime Minister Mulcair could shed the controversey and tarnish from the Turpel-Lafond scandal and instead adopt the mantle of non-partisan statesman and crisis manager. Nobody was going to ask whether or not Tom Mulcair was a drag on the NDP's re-election chances when he was attending virus updates with Dr. Tam or giving news conferences with reporters, talking up the government's response to the virus. Billions of dollars worth of spending went to support small businesses and Canadians stuck at home, unable to go to work, or those out of work entirely. According to the government it was the only way to keep the economy afloat. Forget it being a complex intergovernmental problem the likes of which hadn't been seen in about a century, Tom Mulcair was finally embracing the the role that many New Democrats, especially the socialists within caucus, had been urging him to since first getting elected in 2015.
In only a few months the guy who had seemed too scared to impose a national carbon pricing scheme on the country was standing in front of reporters announcing that his government was prepping to invoke the National Emergencies Act should the provinces not fall behind the government's approach. A replacement for the War Measures Act, which had been controversy used during the First and Second World Wars as well as the October Crisis of the 1970s, the National Emergencies Act came into existence back in 1988. With more checks and balances there would be less of a chance of violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Still, it would give the federal government powers that were normally reserved for the provinces.
Still, there were those in cabinet who suggested that the act be held as a last resort. The nuclear option, should things get worse. If it was invoked too early, the NDP could be seen as too eager to take advantage of the situation.
Yet the Prime Minister was adamant that he was the man for the moment, and that his career at both the federal and provincial levels meant he had the insight needed to navigate the troubled waters. Canada had to tackle the situation as a unified force on the same page. There wasn't room for ideology or politicking. If the Premiers knew any better, they'd sign on and follow Ottawa's lead. A good number of those Premiers, most of whom landed in the centre-right of Canada's political spectrum, were outraged at the very suggestion that Mulcair would invoke the act, calling it an attack on provincial jurisdiction.
But if you asked anyone in the cabinet or PMO, whether or not a Premier was a conservative or not had nothing to do with potentially invoking the controversial act. Seriously. It would be a total coincidence.
Such serious times also required a serious cabinet reshuffle. Deputy Prime Minister Megan Leslie was handed the finance portfolio, taking over from Nathan Cullen who had resigned his seat in order to pursue the leadership of the BC NDP. Other major shake-ups included former International Trade Minister Romeo Saganash taking Foreign Affairs, former Toronto City Planner Jennifer Keesmaat at Health, Peter Julian to National Defence, and Workforce and Employment Minister Alexandre Boulerice taking over Julian's duties as Government House leader. Matthew Green, Hamilton's first Black MP since the days of Lincoln Alexander and self-described "Stanley Knowles New Democrat" was the NDP's new Digital Government Minister. Gender parity was maintained and some new faces were promoted from the backbench. Everyone was happy. Except for maybe Svend Robinson and his friends.
Aside from Niki Ashton remaining as Indigenous Services Minister, both Robinson and his sympathizers were left out in the cold. No cabinet positions for them. In such a time of crisis, the government needed to be on the same page.
That was how the NDP wanted to frame the next campaign. After a few years of lacking a reason or narrative for re-election, the government had been handed their key campaign issue on a silver platter. Want to get through COVID-19? Vote NDP. Want the government to keep you, your business, and your pay-cheques safe? Vote NDP. Want to keep the Tories and the COVID-denying extremists out of power? You had to vote NDP, not Liberal. A vote for Mark Carney was a vote for Jason Kenney to be Prime Minister.
The once proud champions of doing politics differently, the New Democrats had now fully embraced the tried and true strategy of going negative. Even Stephen Harper could be proud of how brazen it all was.
In recent years, however, things had grown frustrating.
For instance, the government was embroiled in a bitter cold war between Mulcair's more moderate faction and Svend Robinson's proudly socialist cohorts. A former fixture of the NDP's left flank, Robinson had found his way back into the House of Commons in the 2017 election, and had quickly got back to his roots. That meant setting up a party within the party and using the government's unstable majority to his advantage. He wouldn't bring down the government, but the option was always on the table. Mulcair, ever the cautious politician, only grew more cautious. The Prime Minister's backers, like policy advisors Anders Rasmussen and Rosa Kouri in the PMO, only got more bitter and angry at what they viewed as a threat to the boss. Not exactly a situation that breeds trust.
Then there was the scandal involving then-Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Appointed in December 2017, Turpel-Lafond, who claimed Cree ancestry, had previously been Saskatchewan's first Indigenous justice. Now she was Canada's first Indigenous member of the Supreme Court. For a country still struggling with its relationship with the Indigenous community, and still coming to terms with how to handle it, such an appointment was wildly applauded across the political and legal landscape. By February 2019, however, reports had begun emerging suggesting that Turpel-Lafond wasn't actually Indigenous, unleashing a firestorm of controversy and dividing members of the government. Justice Minister Craig Scott initially suggested that the government had done its due diligence and completed an extensive background check into her history. A few weeks later as the controversy intensified, Scott backtracked those comments, telling the House of Commons that if anything had been missed the blame was shared by members of the ad hoc committee of members of Parliament responsible for such appointments. Forget about the buck stopping with the Prime Minister, who ultimately got the final say in the appointment, here was the Justice Minister saying everyone was at fault. Backbench MPs, already fearful of worsening poll numbers, wanted Turpel-Lafond out. Mulcair, not wanting to appear guilty of gross incompetence, wanted more time to conduct a full investigation. A month after the initial reports, Justice Turpel-Lafond announced her resignation. She was receiving calls to resign from those close to her and return her countless awards and honors and just wasn't interested in further participating in what she labeled a media witch-hunt. Although the resignation prevented matters from getting worse for the government, those close to Mulcair said that the ordeal had rattled the Prime Minister and his trust in a great number of MPs.
Polling companies had started asking Canadians whether or not Mulcair should lead his party into the next election, and whether the Supreme Court debacle had fatally damaged him. Mark Carney and the Liberals were leading in the polls, with Jason Kenney and the Tories second and the NDP a not-too-distant third. It wasn't the first time the NDP had found themselves in such a position, nor the first time questions like that had been asked. However, It was the first time since winning a majority government that people had begun asking what a post-Mulcair NDP would look like. It was a lesson in loyalty for Mulcair. So long as he was a winner he'd have the party behind him. If he didn't, they'd start looking elsewhere.
Svend Robinson meanwhile was trying to evoke Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senator who had given President Clinton a run for her money in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. The BC MP's call to combat climate change, to fight inequality and tax the rich were a more galvanizing message to party members than whatever Mulcair and his office were doing at the moment.
Fast forward several months later and the scandals were forgotten. Fears over COVID-19 had replaced people's concerns over the ancestry some judge had claimed to have and when. Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, had at first urged Canadians to be vigilant, but not panic. She advised the government not to have Canadians returning from international travel to isolate, even going as far as to strongly advise against wearing masks for fear of transferring any possible virus from their hands to areas around their mouth and eyes (Unlike Anthony Fauci in the United States, Tam wasn't an independent official and had to be onside of the government of the day). The country was a lot better positioned than it had been during the SARS health crisis more than a decade earlier, and Canada would simply take the steps advised by the World Health Organization. Instead of curtailing the virus, by the end of March 2020 Canadians saw their healthcare system, like countless other nations around the globe, pushed to the brink, their schools closed, and lockdowns become the norm. Even the House of Commons wasn't immune, and in-person questions were scuttled. A novel virus had become a global health emergency and a once-in-a-life crisis.
Perhaps cynically, such a crisis presented an opportunity for the New Democrats to change the channel. Prime Minister Mulcair could shed the controversey and tarnish from the Turpel-Lafond scandal and instead adopt the mantle of non-partisan statesman and crisis manager. Nobody was going to ask whether or not Tom Mulcair was a drag on the NDP's re-election chances when he was attending virus updates with Dr. Tam or giving news conferences with reporters, talking up the government's response to the virus. Billions of dollars worth of spending went to support small businesses and Canadians stuck at home, unable to go to work, or those out of work entirely. According to the government it was the only way to keep the economy afloat. Forget it being a complex intergovernmental problem the likes of which hadn't been seen in about a century, Tom Mulcair was finally embracing the the role that many New Democrats, especially the socialists within caucus, had been urging him to since first getting elected in 2015.
In only a few months the guy who had seemed too scared to impose a national carbon pricing scheme on the country was standing in front of reporters announcing that his government was prepping to invoke the National Emergencies Act should the provinces not fall behind the government's approach. A replacement for the War Measures Act, which had been controversy used during the First and Second World Wars as well as the October Crisis of the 1970s, the National Emergencies Act came into existence back in 1988. With more checks and balances there would be less of a chance of violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Still, it would give the federal government powers that were normally reserved for the provinces.
Still, there were those in cabinet who suggested that the act be held as a last resort. The nuclear option, should things get worse. If it was invoked too early, the NDP could be seen as too eager to take advantage of the situation.
Yet the Prime Minister was adamant that he was the man for the moment, and that his career at both the federal and provincial levels meant he had the insight needed to navigate the troubled waters. Canada had to tackle the situation as a unified force on the same page. There wasn't room for ideology or politicking. If the Premiers knew any better, they'd sign on and follow Ottawa's lead. A good number of those Premiers, most of whom landed in the centre-right of Canada's political spectrum, were outraged at the very suggestion that Mulcair would invoke the act, calling it an attack on provincial jurisdiction.
But if you asked anyone in the cabinet or PMO, whether or not a Premier was a conservative or not had nothing to do with potentially invoking the controversial act. Seriously. It would be a total coincidence.
Such serious times also required a serious cabinet reshuffle. Deputy Prime Minister Megan Leslie was handed the finance portfolio, taking over from Nathan Cullen who had resigned his seat in order to pursue the leadership of the BC NDP. Other major shake-ups included former International Trade Minister Romeo Saganash taking Foreign Affairs, former Toronto City Planner Jennifer Keesmaat at Health, Peter Julian to National Defence, and Workforce and Employment Minister Alexandre Boulerice taking over Julian's duties as Government House leader. Matthew Green, Hamilton's first Black MP since the days of Lincoln Alexander and self-described "Stanley Knowles New Democrat" was the NDP's new Digital Government Minister. Gender parity was maintained and some new faces were promoted from the backbench. Everyone was happy. Except for maybe Svend Robinson and his friends.
Aside from Niki Ashton remaining as Indigenous Services Minister, both Robinson and his sympathizers were left out in the cold. No cabinet positions for them. In such a time of crisis, the government needed to be on the same page.
That was how the NDP wanted to frame the next campaign. After a few years of lacking a reason or narrative for re-election, the government had been handed their key campaign issue on a silver platter. Want to get through COVID-19? Vote NDP. Want the government to keep you, your business, and your pay-cheques safe? Vote NDP. Want to keep the Tories and the COVID-denying extremists out of power? You had to vote NDP, not Liberal. A vote for Mark Carney was a vote for Jason Kenney to be Prime Minister.
The once proud champions of doing politics differently, the New Democrats had now fully embraced the tried and true strategy of going negative. Even Stephen Harper could be proud of how brazen it all was.
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
BigVic_1994
New member
Hillary losing in 2008. And like 2016 two New Yorkers walk into a bar
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Colin Powell crushing all his path. So who was President before Powell and Danforth?
CanadianTory
Progressive Conservative
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Indeed.
George W. Bush, who selects Danforth as VP. Throw in a much worse 9/11, Bush's death, and I think the General could be convinced to serve his country in a higher capacity.