[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[viper37]

... with the caveat that the million dollars have to be spent on registered charitable activities.

you do know there are multiple loopholes to that?  You are aware that only a tiny fraction of the money has to be spent on registered charitable activities in order for that charity fund to be a tax haven?

Also, from the LPC electoral program:
We will allow charities to do their work on behalf of Canadians free from political harassment, and will modernize the rules governing the charitable and not-for-profit sectors.
This will include clarifying the rules governing "political activity," with an understanding that charities make an important contribution to public debate and public policy. A new legislative framework to strengthen the sector will emerge from this process.


The current rule says 90% of your funds must be dedicated to charitable work in order for your foundation to engage into politics.

What you will see is a repeat of the US SuperPac system, where people give money to foundation, get a tax receipt, then that foundation organizes events or publish ads for a political party.  That's why you are seeing an increase in donations on the Trudeau foundation.

[Jacob]

"proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is a great standard for the courtroom.

It's a terrible one for politics.

I don't recall you adhering to that philosophy during the Harper years.

In any case - I don't think your smarmy insinuations are going to work unless you get better evidence. And as CC says, directly copying Trumpian tactics when most of Canada - Conservatives included - are shocked at the shitshow South of the border - is not likely to pay dividends for you. You should rather, I think, do your best to keep aspiring Trump-lites out of the limelight during the Conservative Party leadership race.

[Barrister]

"proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is a great standard for the courtroom.

It's a terrible one for politics.

I don't recall you adhering to that philosophy during the Harper years.

In any case - I don't think your smarmy insinuations are going to work unless you get better evidence. And as CC says, directly copying Trumpian tactics when most of Canada - Conservatives included - are shocked at the shitshow South of the border - is not likely to pay dividends for you. You should rather, I think, do your best to keep aspiring Trump-lites out of the limelight during the Conservative Party leadership race.

With the greatest respect, you're the one with the "smarmy insinuations".  You're the one who name-checks Trump, twice, in the Canadian politics thread.  Donald Trump has nothing to do with anything.

[Malthus]

The Trudeau Foundation is a sideshow.

The real issue making waves these days is the allegations that Liberal fundraising events create conflicts of interest, and in effect act as lobbying for specific issues.

As the fundraisers have begun to dominate the House Question Period, it has become more difficult to glean details of fundraisers involving Mr. Trudeau or his ministers. Mr. Trudeau's events are not posted on the party website and the Prime Minister's Office makes no mention of them in its daily report on his official activities.

Mr. Trudeau has repeatedly told the Commons that his government is committed to the "principles of openness, transparency and accountability [that] are necessary for public trust in our institutions" in regard to Liberal fundraising activities.

The Conservative and NDP parties have written formal complaints to Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson and Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd, demanding investigations into Liberal fundraising practices. They allege some of the events violate lobbying laws and the Conflict of Interest Code.

The fundraisers appear to breach Mr. Trudeau's own government guidelines that say "there should be no preferential access to government or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions to politicians and political parties."

The opposition leaders have brought up example after example of pay-to-play events where donors raised government issues with Mr. Trudeau or other cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries. The events appear to violate the Liberal Party's pledge that "fundraising events are partisan functions, where we do not discuss government business."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/majority-of-canadians-surveyed-object-to-liberals-cash-for-access-fundraisers/article33294902/

This is of course a larger issue, that doesn't impact the Liberals alone - but right now they are in government, on an expressly "clean slate" platform, so they are wearing it.

[PRC]

Conservatives in this country would do well not to try to emulate the Trump play book. 

Unfortunately that's exactly what they look like they're doing.  The CPC leadership race has some statements coming out of it that should be raising a lot of alarms.  The recent event in Calgary drew 800 attendees and had some outrageous comments from the CPC leadership hopefuls.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/anti-carbon-tax-rally-calgary-1.3891723

Calgary anti-carbon tax rally draws about 800, including CPC leadership hopefuls
'You are going to see a lot more Trump-type politics in Canada': attendee
By David Bell, CBC News Posted: Dec 11, 2016 1:44 PM MT Last Updated: Dec 12, 2016 7:10 PM MT


Ken Murdoch has lived in Calgary for 68 years. He is not happy about the Alberta carbon tax that goes into effect in just a few short weeks.

"At my age, it is not going to matter a lot, but it certainly will for my children and grandchildren," Murdoch told CBC News Sunday.

He was among approximately 800 people who filled a hotel ballroom in Calgary to protest the tax in a rally organized by conservative media and opinion outlet Rebel Media.

"Brad Wall said at the premier's meetings, he says, if this is a neutral tax ... then why are we doing it? For Alberta to become a socialist province is beyond comprehension for me," said Murdoch.

"We need Brad Wall instead of Rachel Notley. Rachel Notley was a mistake," he continued.

"Everybody knows it, that's why so many people are here. It was a protest vote. Rachel Notley does not know how to run a business, period. We need business people there. I think in the next election, and I know the CBC doesn't like this, but you are going to see a lot more Trump-type politics in Canada. We are going to have to or we are going to be totally broke."

Josiah Shannon, 17, is a first-year plumber looking for employment.

"We don't believe in the carbon tax," Shannon explained.

"In a recession we should have less taxes so we can increase jobs. We just don't need it at the moment."

Shannon's buddy, Keagan Jones, is on the same page, also sporting a Trump-style Make America Great Again baseball cap.

"I think the main reason I am against carbon tax, is because I think it is pretty pointless," said Jones. "I don't really see how it is going to help the environment. Researchers do say that there is no way whatsoever that it actually is going to cut down on carbon [emissions], people still need to have heat for their homes. The idea of change. We want to get in another conservative government, sort of what the Americans did."

It's exactly the sentiment that three Conservative Party of Canada leadership hopefuls hoped to zero-in on for support.

Ontario MP Kellie Leitch took some of her time at the podium to chastise the media.

"The CBC and media elites out there, they are saying that leadership means telling you what you should think," Leitch said.

Canadian values

Leitch says hard work and giving back are Canadian values.

"Go out and work hard so you can give back to your community, give back to your country and I know you are doing that every single day," she said to applause.

"I can tell you, having grown up in Fort McMurray, that is exactly what I learned at the dinner table."

Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost said if he were chosen for the top job, Canada would be open for business.

"This whole climate change agenda, is not science, fact-based," Trost said to thunderous applause and a standing ovation.

"It is based on the government wanting to give away our prosperity and give away our freedom. If I am so honoured someday to be prime minister, the war on oil and gas and coal will be over. That means no carbon tax, that means no cap-and-trade, that means no regulations that are there to strangle the industry. No if, no and, no but, no maybe."

Province suffering

Trost says the province has suffered under the NDP government.

"Since Rachel Notley came to Alberta, 140,000 jobs have been lost," he said.

"Alberta's unemployment rate is now nine per cent, the unemployment rate in Calgary is closing in on 11 per cent. But instead of giving people a hand up, our governments both federally and provincially have been giving people the boot."

Leadership candidate Chris Alexander — who attended the last rally and took heat for watching the crowd briefly chant "lock her up," in reference to Notley and remaining silent — says he will confront political correctness if given the chance.

"Lots of people told me not to come," Alexander said.

"Lots of people back east, donors, establishment types, media top brass, they are warning you, they are saying, 'Why would you do that? Why are you going back there?' I am not going to fold to a bunch of politically correct people," he said to applause.

Job creation most important issue

He says the country and province need to work on keeping jobs at home.

"Job creation is the most important issue in this country right now," Alexander said.

"The sad fact is that we have a federal government and we have multiple provincial governments that are exporting Canadian jobs, they are sending them abroad. Carbon taxes across this country are sending jobs elsewhere, where are they going?"

Rally attendee Sandra Kehler says now is not the time for the tax.

"Just finding a life for myself, an additional tax on anything is going to make it harder," Kehler said.

"I am trying to make it on my own for the first time and having an extra tax added on to that is one of my main concerns. I am employed and I live with two housemates just to make ends meet."

Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt says he's been enjoying the aftermath of the presidential election stateside.

'Watching snowflakes cry'

"Since the United States election, I have actually done my best not to watch or read conservative media," said Fildebrandt. "I have been going out of my way to watch and read liberal media and left media, to just savour the meltdowns, the meltdown of the left. Watching these snowflakes cry."

He says the federal government's priorities are out of line with Canadians.

"Speaking of liberal meltdowns, I am disgusted that the elites in this country care more about what Justin Trudeau has to say about Fidel Castro than what regular Albertans have to say about the carbon tax."

Attendee Ken Murdoch says the rally won't likely change anything, but it's symbolic.

"People have been trying to fight socialist governments in Canada for 50 years and nothing will come of this, but what I see that is nice about this, is the amount of people that are showing support," he said with a smile.

"It gives us all hope."

[Barrister]

The Trudeau Foundation is a sideshow.

The real issue making waves these days is the allegations that Liberal fundraising events create conflicts of interest, and in effect act as lobbying for specific issues.

As the fundraisers have begun to dominate the House Question Period, it has become more difficult to glean details of fundraisers involving Mr. Trudeau or his ministers. Mr. Trudeau's events are not posted on the party website and the Prime Minister's Office makes no mention of them in its daily report on his official activities.

Mr. Trudeau has repeatedly told the Commons that his government is committed to the "principles of openness, transparency and accountability [that] are necessary for public trust in our institutions" in regard to Liberal fundraising activities.

The Conservative and NDP parties have written formal complaints to Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson and Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd, demanding investigations into Liberal fundraising practices. They allege some of the events violate lobbying laws and the Conflict of Interest Code.

The fundraisers appear to breach Mr. Trudeau's own government guidelines that say "there should be no preferential access to government or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions to politicians and political parties."

The opposition leaders have brought up example after example of pay-to-play events where donors raised government issues with Mr. Trudeau or other cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries. The events appear to violate the Liberal Party's pledge that "fundraising events are partisan functions, where we do not discuss government business."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/majority-of-canadians-surveyed-object-to-liberals-cash-for-access-fundraisers/article33294902/

This is of course a larger issue, that doesn't impact the Liberals alone - but right now they are in government, on an expressly "clean slate" platform, so they are wearing it.

What's great was when Trudeau admitted that people would lobby him at those private fundraisers, but he said 'don't worry about it - I make up my own mind'.

[Jacob]

So I see you're going with a "pure co-incidence" then on the dramatic increase in donations since 2014.

Of course he does.  Justin is a leftwinger.  Leftwinger get a pass at anything in this country.

When you post things like that is it because you think you're being clever or because you actually believe it?

[Jacob]

With the greatest respect, you're the one with the "smarmy insinuations".  You're the one who name-checks Trump, twice, in the Canadian politics thread.  Donald Trump has nothing to do with anything.

With the greatest respect, you were the one who brought Trump into the conversation when you said:

And it's just as much about the Trump Foundation as the Clinton Foundation.

You start with smarmy insinuations that directly parallel the playbook used in the US election, then double down by suggesting parallels to Trump, then triple down by alleging I "name-check Trump twice" when you're the one who bring him into the conversation to begin with.

In your best moments, BB, you represent an honest intellectual and political tradition that has much to contribute to Canadian politics and governance. This is not your best. The GOP may have had success with dirtbag politics, but like I said I don't think importing those tactics unvarnished will help the Conservative party in Canada. Were I you I'd focus on providing a compelling alternative true to Canadian values and bide your time until the Trudeau Liberals fuck up - which they will eventually. This, however, is not it and will only serve to tarnish your reputation.

[Jacob]

Unfortunately that's exactly what they look like they're doing.  The CPC leadership race has some statements coming out of it that should be raising a lot of alarms.  The recent event in Calgary drew 800 attendees and had some outrageous comments from the CPC leadership hopefuls.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/anti-carbon-tax-rally-calgary-1.3891723

Here's hoping it doesn't go anywhere... but these days it seems we shouldn't be too confident.

[Barrister]

Unfortunately that's exactly what they look like they're doing.  The CPC leadership race has some statements coming out of it that should be raising a lot of alarms.  The recent event in Calgary drew 800 attendees and had some outrageous comments from the CPC leadership hopefuls.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/anti-carbon-tax-rally-calgary-1.3891723

Here's hoping it doesn't go anywhere... but these days it seems we shouldn't be too confident.

I don't see much that is objectionable in PRC's link.

Just because a wildly unqualified person like Trump got elected on an "anti-PC" campaign doesn't mean people are wrong to complain about political correctness.  There probably are some lessons that can be learned from Trump's campaign by the CPC.  There are probably also some wrong lessons to learn as well, but Trump's campaign was a modern marvel - the COnservatives would be foolish not to look at what aspects of it they should emulate.

The couple of things I don't like seeing are embracing the "global warming is a hoax".  The Conservatives can and should try to promote a free-market friendly, revenue neutral approach to fighting CO2 emissions, and not embrace willfull ignorance.  And, not mentioned in the article, there was an incident where some protestors were chanting "lock her up" directed at Notley.  Now you can't really control what a crowd of people says, but politicians should not be encouraging that kind of anti-democratic language.

[Barrister]

With the greatest respect, you're the one with the "smarmy insinuations".  You're the one who name-checks Trump, twice, in the Canadian politics thread.  Donald Trump has nothing to do with anything.

With the greatest respect, you were the one who brought Trump into the conversation when you said:

And it's just as much about the Trump Foundation as the Clinton Foundation.

You start with smarmy insinuations that directly parallel the playbook used in the US election, then double down by suggesting parallels to Trump, then triple down by alleging I "name-check Trump twice" when you're the one who bring him into the conversation to begin with.

In your best moments, BB, you represent an honest intellectual and political tradition that has much to contribute to Canadian politics and governance. This is not your best. The GOP may have had success with dirtbag politics, but like I said I don't think importing those tactics unvarnished will help the Conservative party in Canada. Were I you I'd focus on providing a compelling alternative true to Canadian values and bide your time until the Trudeau Liberals fuck up - which they will eventually. This, however, is not it and will only serve to tarnish your reputation.

My one reference to Trump was a couple pages back.

Look, don't take offence at this, but the Conservative Party's path to return to power doesn't really depend on winning your demographic (that is - if you were even a citizen).  I will continue to give political commentary as I see it.  I found that graphic of donations to the Trudeau Foundation quite shocking, since it went from very few donations, and zero foreign donations, for many years, only to dramatically surge once Justin was elected.  In it's way it's more shocking than the Clinton Foundation, which at least had operated in a similar fashion both before and after Hillary was Secretary of State.

If you don't find that compelling, well, I don't know what to tell you.  res ipsa loquitor

[Josephus]

... with the caveat that the million dollars have to be spent on registered charitable activities.

So everybody wins,

[Malthus]

The problem with Trump, quite aside form his willful pandering to blatant populist xenophobia, is that he was apparently rewarded for being willfully contemptuous to the notion that there was anything like an objective truth.

Part of what I always hated about left wing "political correctness" was the tendency on the part of those supporting it to not care about objective truth, even (in the academic setting) to declare more or less that the whole notion of objective truth was a sham, that all truth was just subjective opinions seen through the lens of various sorts of "privileges", and so the only thing worth talking about was interests, not realities.

If we hated PC stuff for that reason, we really ought to hate Trump and his ilk far, far more. He's the horrific result of that leftish tendency multiplied a thousand times and embraced by those who *have* all sorts of "privileges".   

[Barrister]

The problem with Trump, quite aside form his willful pandering to blatant populist xenophobia, is that he was apparently rewarded for being willfully contemptuous to the notion that there was anything like an objective truth.

Part of what I always hated about left wing "political correctness" was the tendency on the part of those supporting it to not care about objective truth, even (in the academic setting) to declare more or less that the whole notion of objective truth was a sham, that all truth was just subjective opinions seen through the lens of various sorts of "privileges", and so the only thing worth talking about was interests, not realities.

If we hated PC stuff for that reason, we really ought to hate Trump and his ilk far, far more. He's the horrific result of that leftish tendency multiplied a thousand times and embraced by those who *have* all sorts of "privileges".

Oh agreed.  His contempt for the truth is quite horrifying.

[Jacob]

that is - if you were even a citizen

I will be by the next election, unless it's a snap one

Of course, where I'm at the question is whether I maintain or weaken the NDP stranglehold on my riding... unless we move.