It’s been a few weeks since we delved into politics, so let’s take a look and see if anything happened… not that anything usually goes down in August, but we’ll check.
Let’s see…. Conservative party explodes as former leadership candidate has giant hissy fit.
Okay, that’s one thing.
President Because I Said So announces he is cancelling NAFTA and making a new deal with Mexico and possibly Canada if he can get Trudeau to be sufficiently supplicant.
Let’s tackle that one first.
A major point to note is that President Trump can’t actually cancel a treaty without Congressional approval. Nor can it change in Canada or Mexico without approval from the House and Congress respectively. Another point is that the deal he boldly announced this week with Mexico doesn’t really change much and in fact, NAFTA negotiations go on despite Trump’s preference to deal with, and threaten, each country individually.
In fact his announcement, as with many of his announcements, doesn’t really amount to anything, yet is delivered with great fanfare — remember when he declared peace with North Korea back in June? It’s almost as if he’s trying to distract from something. What could that be?
Could it be that many, many, many of his associates are being convicted of various financial shenanigans? That other very close associates are making deals to sing to prosecutors for immunity? That he’s getting severely criticized for not showing a modicum of respect at the passing of Senator and political rival John McCain?
No, that’s not it, because those things didn’t really happen, according to Trump. It’s all a giant conspiracy abetted by Google, which keeps bringing up bad Trump stories when you Google his name. Not the good Trump stories, of which there are so many.
Trump called for an investigation of Google this week because his ego wasn’t sufficiently massaged when he searched his own name. Also he accused NBC of somehow doctoring an interview he gave to make it sound like he said what he says he didn’t say.
Oy.
Our political doings seem so tame in comparison, although Canada is in tough with these NAFTA negotiations and our supply-managed dairy system is very much under the gun. Trudeau will have to decided how tough he can be and it’s pretty dicey. The Opposition is ready to pounce on any misstep.
But the Opposition has its own troubles right now.
Let’s look at what turned out to be a very fiery convention in Halifax last week for the Conservative Party.
Now normally, a convention a year or so before a federal election would be a time to begin preparations, hone the message, sharpen the platform. Instead it turned into something else entirely as Maxime Bernier, who came second to CPC leader Andrew Scheer in last year’s leadership race, absolutely imploded the party, calling it morally bankrupt and declaring he would start a new party. Interestingly, it is supply management that has Bernier’s knickers in a twist. It was, in fact, a major issue in the Conservative leadership race.
The kerfuffle has caused even former Prime Minister Steven Harper to emerge from where ever he’s been hiding to support Scheer.
Now most pundits agree that Bernier, even if he gathers a few Conservative MPs into the fold of his new party, can’t really do that much damage across the country. But he doesn’t need to do too much damage. All he has to do is filter off a few right-leaning votes and the Conservative hopes of even getting a minority government could be gone.
It does even the playing field somewhat. In next year’s election the two key guys are going to be Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer. Jagmeet Singh of the NDP has failed to set the world on fire and lags badly in the polls. Now we have another party on the right and it’s Trudeau vs Scheer.
The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente describes Scheer thusly, “Mr. Scheer is a colourless, diligent consensus-builder with no bold vision – a family man in off-the-rack suits who’s popular with social conservatives and dairy farmers.”
That’s… not a great endorsement, especially when you’re going up against Mr. Charisma in a Suit, Trudeau. Although many accuse Trudeau of being an empty suit.
But the last thing Andrew Scheer needed was Maxime Bernie to let his ego get away on him and try to remake the Canadian political landscape a year before the election.
Carolyn Grant is Editor of the Kimberley Bulletin