Me too. I don’t think the governing party should play games with passing legislation like omnibus bills. And proroguing parliament, especially to avoid a political crisis, is ultra scummy.
Well, the Liberals have started attacking the nutbar. O’Toole isn’t going to jump at the Liberals’ whistle, but Sloan is such an easy target that they probably want to highlight him more and fan the Liberal base.
O’Toole has seemed fairly reasonable thus far. To beat MacKay, he leaned to the right and it is unclear what concessions might have been made. But he has more personality than Scheer and seems to understand voters better than some in his party. So we’ll see.
I find ‘Take Back Canada’, off putting, in the extreme.
Take it back from who? Other Canadians? Seems a titch aggressive and unnecessarily divisive too. It doesn’t seem like a winning approach. Maybe they’ll reconsider.
I guess so. But it’s a better slogan than “Take off, hoser” and snappier than “Ontario - open for business. Kinda.” I guess the idea was to be aggressive and vague at the same time.
O’Toole ran in the previous convention as a nice guy and lost to Scheer. This time he decided to run as a tough guy. He won, but a lot of the toughness is in the form of vague slogans. It’s too bad - we should be “taking back” from cozy duopolies, digital conglomerates, underregulated opportunists, avaricious foreign real estate speculators and innovative cyberthugs. Unfortunately, they possibly have in mind the CBC, Aboriginals, refugees and peaceful protestors.
Pure speculation, however, and meant semi hunourously.
One gets the sense the Liberals wanted Sloan to win so much they weren’t prepared if he didn’t.
O’Toole’s first comments as leader were about inclusion:
“I believe that whether you are Black, white, brown or from any race or creed, whether you are LGBT or straight, whether you are an Indigenous Canadian or have joined the Canadian family three weeks ago or three generations ago, whether you’re doing well or barely getting by … you are an important part of Canada and you have a home in the Conservative Party of Canada,”
That’s a good start. And smart politics.
In the meantime, the Trudeau government says it has no need to consult with any other parties or compromise in any way on its economic plans, daring the opposition to hold a vote of non-confidence if they don’t like it. And of course they have made sure there will be no parliamentary debate on these issues - or any parliament at all, for that matter.
Of course, that probably means they’ve cut a deal with the NDP to keep them in power if there is a vote of non-confidence.
Please let O’Toole get his party up to speed fast. We need real opposition to this government.
That’s great for O’Toole to say. It’ll will be interesting to see if he follows that up with any action.
O’Toole has the problem of members making his life hell. For example the Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative MP for South Surrey-White Rock retweeted an image take back in 2009 of Chrystia Freeland interviewing George Soros and making very strange inferences
““This is George Soros with Canada’s new Finance Minister a few years ago listening carefully to him like student to teacher. The closeness of these two should alarm every Canadian,” she wrote.”
She has since deleted the tweet and apologized to those who thought she might be endorsing hateful rhetoric despite the fact the interview took place in 2009, the current Deputy PM was a reporter and George Soros is not actually a tentacled endowed, shadowy Jewish manipulator pushing for the white race’s to extinction or whatever the hell else morons think.
“I have removed the tweets and apologize to anyone who thinks I would want to endorse hateful rhetoric”
So again what is the goal with “alarm every Canadian” or “take back Canada”? They very specifically frame the country as under siege from an other and I’d appreciate someone helping me figure out what is the root cause.
Yeah, MPs like Sloan and Lewis are not going to do him any favours convincing Canadians he is really welcoming of the LGBTQ+ community. Lewis is also not going to be helpful on the climate change front. The best thing he could do (from my point of view) would be to drop Sloan and Lewis from the party. But he would get ravaged by the social conservatives for doing that. I wouldn’t be surprised if he puts Lewis in the shadow cabinet since she had a lot of popularity in the leadership race. Just have to wait and see what happens, but I have the funny feeling his actions are not going to match what he said.
I am not sure that’s an easy thing for the CPC leader to do.
It’s interesting to note that back the last time Parliament had a free vote on something like same sex marriage, dozens of Liberal MPs argued and voted against it. Those MPs were never attacked by progressives, though. It’s as if everyone was just pretending they didn’t exist.
Some of more Liberal/NDP progressive friends sure did. I cannot remember my reaction. I don’t think I said much one way or the other about the Liberal MPs opposing it, I just remember being in favour of same-sex marriage. They should have every right to be as miserable as the rest of us. 
And yeah, as I was trying to allude to, I don’t think he can do it. And it would be political suicide for him so from his point of view he clearly shouldn’t. Just that, from my point of view, Sloan and Lewis are stains on the party.
If there were say an anti-vaxxer in the Liberal party, then I would want them dropped too.
Sloan and Lewis are not going to be deciding factors for me, because I don’t really have a single deciding factors. I guess maybe climate change at the moment probably makes up 85% of my voting decisions, so I kind of take that back a little. I don’t normally but this is just because I know how critical is that we take immediate action. And sadly climate change deniers and minimalists have prevented taking action for so long that as more time passes the action we’re going to have to take is only going to become more drastic.
Lewis did well in the Western provinces. Sloan did better than expected. Neither are going anywhere. The Conservatives do include the social conservatives, but will not likely win without limiting them.
Definitely. I was really hoping the PPC might siphon out more of the social conservatives out of the CPC and leave it more center (in the Canadian spectrum). I’m not making any decisions at this point. O’Toole isn’t off to a bad start. Let’s see where he goes as leader and what he can come up with.
How is this different than declaring that Canada is back after Trudeau won? Back to what? Lack of ethics?
Well in that case it was back to a multilateral foreign policy - which lasted about as long as you would think before wilting in the typical Canadian apathy for foreign policy.
Take Back Canada. Either we’re taking it back somewhere or we’re taking it from someone. I’m assuming they mean take it back from the Liberals but in that case the message isn’t targeted to citizens but a political tribe. I’m unimpressed by tribalism.
Is it possible the parties could pick more uninspiring slogans: “Canada. It is what it is.”; “Canada: It’s Time To Take Great Hockey Back, Again.”; “Canada: Where The Wild Moose Wanders At Will”.
Yeah, ‘Canada is back!’, AFTER they won isn’t a campaign slogan though, it was a victory cheer.
‘Take Canada Back’ as a campaign slogan is divisive, tribal and aggressive. They just can’t help but take their lead from what they see working for the Right in the US, I think. It didn’t work last time, but they keep swinging.
Hard core Conservatives will eat it up, but I suspect average Canadians will find it off putting as it’s too similar to the sort of rhetoric they see tearing up our southern neighbours.
I wish them luck, but I think it’s going to be unhelpful.
And it might be understood as “Take Canada Back - we don’t want it any more”