The Ketchup War (updated)
July 4, 2018
July 1st Canada responded to Trump’s trade war. Tariffs on steel and aluminum on top of softwood lumber and Bombardier aircraft made Canadian journalists and politicians jumpy, but then Trump shot off his mouth and Canadians got behind retaliatory tariffs on a shopping cart of items.
News stories invariably refer to whiskey, boats, sleeping bags, maple syrup and Harley Davidsons when they talk of the trade war, but I would suggest to you than none of the items on that list mean much, except for Heinz Ketchup.
Heinz Ketchup. “I’ll wait for the Heinz.” How many times have you heard that slogan? It has been the punch line in generations of high-quality T.V. ads designed to make the Heinz Ketchup brand identification as visceral as any. Product placements surpass those of Coca Cola.
But Heinz, a major employer in Leamington, Ontario “The Tomato Capital of Canada”, abruptly dumped its Canadian supplier and moved the factory south. Well-read shoppers took umbrage and discovered that French’s Ketchup could easily fill the niche as Canada’s ketchup, if they could dragoon Loblaw’s into stocking it. Loblaw’s did, and other supermarkets followed. French’s Ketchup may now appear on a bottom shelf, but it is at least present in the store.
The next squabble may be fought in fast food chains, where the bulk stuff and the nasty little plastic packets will need to change their brand labels, if not the actual content, in order to protect their bottom line.
But The Ketchup War will succeed or fail on the very type of decision which put Donald Trump in the White House. The supermarket ketchup aisle has become a ballot box, complete with its moment of private introspection where the barrage of subliminal information meets one’s private urges, prejudices, aspirations and pocket-book calculations. The shopper must consciously reflect upon the choice of condiment. Will they* wear their maple leaf on their sleeve and boycott Heinz, or follow deeply-ingrained habits and grab another bottle of the all-too-available foreign product? (*I know. The mangled pronoun agreement gives me feelings of nausea as well, but the language has changed.)
Update, 4 July, 2018, 12:33 p.m.:
My wife read this over and demanded that I remove a comment she had made about the relative unavailability of alternatives to Heinz Ketchup in smaller supermarkets, so I have complied with her desire. She further reported that the display of large ketchup bottles she examined at Gordanier’s in Elgin this morning is located on a bottom shelf. Half of the display markets store brands: President’s Choice and No Name, in equal proportion. She noticed little depletion on this portion of the shelf. The other half of the display allocates the space equally to Heinz and French’s. Both appeared to have been equally depleted by the weekend shopping blitz.
Update, 9 July, 10:30 a.m.
CBC Business Reporter Sophia Harris has an article on The Ketchup Wars on the CBC website this morning. The head marketing guy for Heinz is whining about the unfairness of the ketchup tariff, yada yada yada. The compilers of the Canadian tariff list seem to have taken a dim view of town-killing decisions by American businesses. Heinz got it for leaving Leamington tomato growers and processing-plant workers in the lurch. Hershey’s Chocolate received similar vengeful thoughts when the charitable corporation (I read the charter) pulled the factory operation out of Smiths Falls with no plausible reason to do so. There was labour peace, a skilled work force, status as the largest employer in town — Hell, the water tower still advertises Hershey! Still, they put 550 people out of work and abandoned a profitable factory in perfect condition.
But just wait and see what happens if Trump puts a tariff on automobiles. Then it will be time to go after the drug patents controlled by American drug companies. I’m inclined to think that the enabling legislation is already written, and there won’t be any month-long delay this time. Let’s see how Trump reacts to the president of a drug company shooting out his porch light. Big Pharma has more money than the auto sector.
If you feel helpless but angry in the face of a trade war, take heart from the gander in the video.
Fake news and NAFTA
June 28, 2018
Donald Trump has regularly used lies and exaggerations in his public pronouncements. According to the Globe and Mail, a fake chart of Canadian tariffs levied against the United States is making the rounds, with no effort to correct the record by the posting websites when presented with the facts by the Globe. The tacit approval of this misinformation from the White House seems as to indicate that in the current administration’s view, lies are fair game in beating down an opponent. No wonder Canadians are staying away from the border and making their Internet purchases on Canadian sites.
The following appeared in the Globe and Mail this morning:
ADRIAN MORROW U.S. CORRESPONDENT
WASHINGTON
PUBLISHED JUNE 27, 2018
UPDATED 12 HOURS AGO
If you believe a chart of tariff rates circulating on Facebook and Twitter by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump, Canada is egregiously gouging the United States.
Under the North American free-trade agreement, the table claims, Canada charges levies of 45 per cent on aluminum, HVAC equipment and televisions; 35 per cent on vacuums and cable boxes; 25 per cent on cars and steel; and 48 per cent on copper. The highest U.S. rate for any of these items, by contrast, is listed at just 5 per cent.
There’s just one problem: Every Canadian number on the chart is false. Under NAFTA, the tariff Canada charges the United States for every one of the listed items is zero.
(Graphic missing here)
Globe and Mail Evening Update, June 28, 2018, provided a summary:
Have you seen the chart of tariff rates circulating on Facebook and Twitter by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump, suggesting Canada is gouging the United States? Under the North American free-trade agreement, it says, Canada charges levies of 45 per cent on aluminum, HVAC equipment and televisions; 35 per cent on vacuums and cable boxes; 25 per cent on cars and steel; and 48 per cent on copper. The highest U.S. rate for any of these items, by contrast, is listed at just 5 per cent. One problem: Every Canadian number on the chart is false. Under NAFTA, the tariff Canada charges the United States for every item listed is zero. The origin of the fake tariff chart is not clear. It first cropped up on social media in the days after the Group of Seven summit in Quebec, when Trump called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “dishonest and weak” for complaining about the President’s metals tariffs. (subscribers)
The only thing ‘wrong’ about this chart is that all the numbers are completely wrong. There are no such tariffs.
The misinformation comes as Mr. Trump ratchets up his trade attacks on Canada. He has hit the country with steel and aluminum tariffs, demanded changes to NAFTA to tilt the playing field toward the United States and threatened crippling levies of 25 per cent on Canadian-made cars.
False, shareable memes, including some created by Russian agents, have been circulating among Trump supporters for years. But they have usually targeted emotionally charged topics, not dry policy matters. The emergence of the chart reflects the increasing furor with which the President’s base sees international trade. And it has observers worried that such misinformation will contribute to the momentum Mr. Trump is building for an escalating continental trade war.
“The President is purposefully evoking a fight against Canada right now. He has an agenda to demonize the trade relationship,” said Bruce Heyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada, who said the popularity of the chart is an outgrowth of Mr. Trump’s misleading and hyperbolic trade rhetoric.
The President has, for instance, repeatedly accused Canada of “taking advantage” of the U.S. with its high tariffs on dairy – one of the few barriers that remain under NAFTA – but has been silent on the United States’ own tariffs on a range of food products from sugar to peanuts to sour cream.
At a Monday rally in South Carolina, the mere mention of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s name drew boos from the crowd. “Justin, what’s your problem, Justin?” Mr. Trump said. “Canada has a 275-per-cent tariff on dairy products … I said, ‘Look, if you want to do that, we’re going to put a little tariff on your cars coming in.’ ”
The exact origin of the fake tariff chart is not clear. It first cropped up on social media in the days after the Group of Seven summit in Quebec, when Mr. Trump called Mr. Trudeau “dishonest and weak” for complaining about the President’s metals tariffs.
On June 13, a pro-Trump Twitter account called @TakebkUS tweeted the chart. Both the chart and the tweet contained the same grammatical error, mistakenly inserting an apostrophe to pluralize “tariffs” and “TVs.” But the person who runs @TakebkUS, who would not give his or her name, told The Globe he or she did not create the chart and did not remember where it came from.
The next day, a Trump-supporting Facebook page called The Federalist Papers posted the chart with the comment “Does this seem wrong to you?” and garnered 27,000 reactions.
On June 21, Charlie Kirk, the founder of a conservative student group, fell for the hoax. “Trump is levelling the playing field with Canada who has been ripping us off,” he tweeted, along with the false Canadian tariff levels. His tweet received more than 10,000 retweets and 20,000 likes.
Neither Mr. Kirk nor The Federalist Papers responded to requests for comment. None of the people who shared the table erased or corrected it after informed by The Globe that the numbers are fake.
Scott Lincicome, a trade expert with the Cato Institute think tank, said the chart’s figures are so outlandish that it is clearly a deliberate hoax and not an honest mistake.
“It strikes me as so obviously wrong that it wasn’t unintentional,” he said. “Someone sat down and decided they would create a fake chart.”
The table’s creator even cited three supposed sources for the false numbers: The Office of the United States Trade Representative, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Canadian Minister of International Trade. None of the three show figures on their websites anywhere close to the supposed Canadian NAFTA tariffs in the chart. The spread of politically charged internet hoaxes first came to public attention during the 2016 presidential election, when made-up news stories and memes – generally targeted at Trump supporters – spread through Facebook and Twitter. Some were allegedly built by Russian agents trying to tip the election to Mr. Trump.
“Trump made NAFTA an emotional issue and made his supporters think about it in emotional terms,” said David Carroll, an associate professor at the Parsons School of Design who has tracked the rise of false news. “There’s no issue that isn’t seen through a sense of resentment.”
In reality, Mr. Heyman said, the few trade disputes between the two countries are small blemishes in a mostly harmonious and 99-per-cent tariff-free trading relationship worth $900-billion last year.
“Imagine a pristine sports field, and in the middle of it, Trump sees a single dandelion,” Mr. Heyman said. “He says, ‘Oh my God, look at that – it’s full of weeds, we’d better rip up the whole field.’ ”
Here’s a link worth a click.
June 19, 2018
Remember the great fuss about BPA, the toxic lining in baby bottles which was run out of North American stores? It’s returning to popularity as toxin-of-the-month, tied with Roundup, the popular herbicide.
https://www.treehugger.com/health/who-cares-about-bpa-canned-beer-more-popular-ever.html
And this is just sickening:
How can the American people allow abuse like this in their own country? It’s fascism, folks. Remember, Hitler was elected to power. It took the German people seventy years to get over that mistake.
from Macleans, June 12, 2018
June 13, 2018
Why pharmaceuticals could be the prescription for trade warfare that truly hurts America
Opinion: If Canada wants to decisively threaten maximum pain and stop the escalating trade war with the U.S., it should propose expropriating pharmaceutical patents
by Amir Attaran
Amir Attaran is a lawyer, biomedical scientist, and professor in the faculty of law and the faculty of medicine at the University of Ottawa.
What began as a trade skirmish over Donald Trump’s imposition of a 10-per-cent tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum is now clearly a trade war. The miasma is only just lifting from the G7 summit in Charlevoix, Que., in which a Justin Trudeau press conference over a spiked communiqué sparked a Trump tantrum.
But the war’s final battle will not be the tariff that our government has already imposed in retaliation on American pizza, whisky, mattresses, coffee, et cetera—in fact, our tit-for-tat tariffs have only caused the White House to double down and promise even more tariffs against Canada soon. That means that Canada’s symmetrical retaliation is not working—and if we do not rethink our strategy now, we could soon be inside a tornado-like spiral of escalating tariffs, causing rising prices, sinking economies, and growing joblessness on both sides of the border.
If we are not to let the bully win, Canada must find an asymmetrical way to retaliate in this trade war. One that destroys American resolve, but spares us—or even benefits us. But how?
There are several ways, but Canada should consider—and threaten—expropriating American pharmaceutical patents.
Pharmaceutical patents are ultra-valuable assets. Whoever controls a drug’s patent has the exclusive right to make and export that drug. With typical drug prices growing an average of 12 per cent annually, and with certain specialty drugs priced over $500,000, controlling the right pharmaceutical patents is like having several gold mines.
But what makes pharmaceutical patents ripe for retaliation is the vulnerability of America’s pharmaceutical industry. Six of the world’s top ten pharmaceutical companies are American. No industry throws more lobbying dollars around Washington—more than the banking, defence, and automobile industries combined. Any trade retaliation aimed at pharmaceuticals certainly will be felt on Wall Street and heard in the White House.
Canada has already expropriated pharmaceutical patents in the past: The federal government did so hundreds of times in the 1970s and 1980s, but stopped because of the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which later inspired NAFTA. Now that the White House wants to back out of our trading relations and NAFTA too, it is fair to revisit that decision.
Thanks to an obscure twist of world trade law, doing so is perfectly legal, too. In the years since NAFTA, developments in international law have made expropriation of pharmaceutical patents easier and less risky than ever. Between 1998 and 2005, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the World Trade Organization cobbled together special rules making it lawful to “compulsory license”—or, essentially, expropriate—pharmaceutical patents. The rules allow Canada’s government to authorize Canadian companies to copy patented drugs controlled by U.S. companies. There is no need for an AIDS-like health emergency, so long as certain manageable procedural steps are followed. Further, those procedural steps can be shortcut “to remedy a practice determined after … administrative process to be anti-competitive”—likely an easy determination for President Trump’s bogus claim that aluminum and steel tariffs are needed for national security.
Once granted, a compulsory license leaves Canadian firms with the right to copy, sell, and potentially export the targeted drug, at the expense of a U.S. firm who is compensated only pennies on the dollar for the lost value of its patent monopoly. The White House would be left furious by Canada’s decision, but it would be without legal recourse.
There would be several advantages to this move. Macroeconomically, compulsory licensing would mean growth for the Canadian pharmaceutical industry, and decline for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Microeconomically, it would mean cheaper drugs for Canadian households, once the American companies’ patent monopoly is broken. From a domestic policy angle, it would mean billions of dollars of savings for Canada’s publicly-funded Medicare system.
And most importantly, diplomatically, it would mean unleashing the most powerful industrial lobby in Washington to beat up the White House on our behalf.
Normally, I wouldn’t advocate for compulsory licensing. Throughout my career, writing public health and legal reports for the United Nations, I have been skeptical of it, because there are almost always better ways to obtain drugs cheaply than snatching patents. But in a trade war, that’s beside the point. Winning means using economic and political power to intimidate and injure your opponent while staying legally onside yourself. The asymmetrical warfare of pharmaceutical compulsory licensing would be unsurpassable for that.
Just look at the threat posed by a precision offensive of Canadian compulsory licensing. For the American pharmaceutical industry, which claims to be worth USD$1.3 trillion to the American economy, picking off its most profitable drugs poses a near-existential threat, because once Canada shows how to unravel patents, other countries will copy us. There would also probably be no greater disaster for the White House’s trade agenda, which has made a priority to demand stronger pharmaceutical patent protection fromCanada, Mexico, the EU, China, India, Japan, and elsewhere. If Canada started with the drugs of Eli Lilly and Company, say—headquartered in Vice President Mike Pence’s home state of Indiana—fear would set in quickly.
With President Trump intent on trashing America’s allies and wrecking the postwar trade order, Canada has reason to threaten compulsory licensing and show the White House where its folly will lead. Republicans and Democrats benefit about equally from the pharmaceutical industry’s campaign donations, so a credible outcome would be that the industry lobbies furiously for a bipartisan agreement in Congress overriding President Trump’s misbegotten tariffs.
In short, this strategy would inflict far greater agony on the White House, at a lower risk, than retaliatory tariffs alone—and boost Canada’s economy and health care system while it was at it.
Expropriating pharmaceutical patents sounds like a significant, hardball play—and that is what it is, undeniably. But as huge as the impact would be, it wouldn’t permanently damage relations not just because Canada has made this threat before—a 2001 ultimatum over anthrax drugs—but because the threat would never need to be enacted. Congress would intervene, thanks to the ferocious pharma lobby, and relations would return to normal.
And remember: that free, global trade has kept the peace for decades by making customers of former enemies who once fought real wars. We cannot afford to forget that a hard-fought trade war is conservative and preferable in comparison.
The battle of the pollsters
May 30, 2018
As the clock ticks down to the June 7th provincial election in Ontario, almost half of the voters are undecided. Global News and Angus Reid regularly publish polls showing Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives in the lead. Mainstreet, MacLean’s, the Sun chain, the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star run stories about the rising momentum of the NDP under leader Andrea Horwath.
The consensus holds that the election is far too close to call due to the percentage of voters (up to 43% in one report) who will make up their minds in the booth. I guess that’s an invitation for some pollsters to whip up a bandwagon effect with their surveys, if they think it will work.
The Toronto Star editorial board commented in an interview with Liberal leader Kathleen Wynn this week that the recent round of complimentary articles from columnists traditionally opposed to her “must give you the feel of a political obituary.”
Wynn cracked back, “Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
An editor did quote one sharp-tongued critic with a particularly conciliatory remark: “Kathleen Wynn has been a better premier than we deserve.”
If the desire for change is the overwhelming ballot box issue in this election, then Wynn’s Liberals are toast. Andrea Horwath seems the beneficiary of the PC’s turmoil prior to the election, and then their bone-headed choice of Doug Ford as leader. Ford has yet to come up with a platform and fills his speeches with muttered bromides, but I guess if you want to believe a leader’s promises enough, objectivity has nothing to do with one’s choice.
For ten years Andrea Horwath has been a cipher as leader of the Ontario NDP. Now she has been presented by circumstance as the least repugnant of the leading candidates.
Personally I would prefer to see an NDP minority so that an NDP/Liberal coalition would offer some guidance to the naive Horwath and her motley crew of MPPs. Anybody but Ford, in any case. From my perspective as an educator, success as a middle-level high-school drug dealer and the legacy of drug abuse and ruined lives in his family make Doug Ford the worst possible choice for premier of Ontario.
Last provincial election I voted NDP because the local guy impressed me far more than the other three candidates whom I also sat down in my living room for interviews. This time I haven’t spoken to any of them. PC Steve Clark can mail this one in and still return to Queen’s Park, but I’ll vote Liberal out of respect for Wynn.
Various journalists have written about methods to undo the knotted rope of obligation which is the Kimberly-Morgan Pipeline conflict. I would like to suggest a modest proposal which could free up the wheels of commerce and progress, once again foster amity between the western provinces, and leave Quebec out of the discussion before they over-reach their special status in Canada and provoke a backlash from the other nine provinces and three territories, and most of all, cost the taxpayer not one dollar.
The proposal would also allow the First Nations who are still holding out for a better deal to blame Ottawa for their intransigence and extract whatever largesse these moans might generate.
John Horgan feels a deep personal need for power. In order to gain it after the last election he formed a coalition with the B.C. Green Party to turf the ruling Liberals. Those three Green Party seats have put him and the B.C. Government into the position of blocking the K-M pipeline on questionable legal grounds and damaging the economic prospects of his own province’s interior and the entire province of Alberta.
Horgan must see that this arrangement with the Greens is running away from him. Protestors are turning out to be the professional radicals who are opposed to everything. He is well on the way to appearing the dupe of the most corrupt elements of B.C. politics. Jobs for thousands of B.C. construction workers are being sacrificed each day so that Liberals rich enough to own seaside estates can continue to look out their windows over the Pacific without the sight of grimy tankers interfering with their view. Is David Suzuki’s window the hill on which John Horgan is prepared to allow his political career to die?
What if there were another way, a political move often used in western provincial politics, to dissolve this blockage? Would not a grateful public flock to the leaders who saw the way to eliminate this conflict? Would John Horgan not emerge as the statesman-premier who cooled down Rachel Notley’s rage and ensured jobs for a vast number of potential NDP voters from the interior of his own province?
John Horgan needs reassurance that his government can survive the no-confidence vote he would face if he calls the Green Party’s bluff. Why not arrange a floor-crossing of let’s say five Liberals to the NDP? Who knows? Perhaps more would be delighted to find a berth as backbenchers in government again. One would hope the groundswell wouldn’t be as dramatic as the one that did in the Wild Rose Party in Alberta a couple of years ago, but the shuffling of a few seats could definitely change the political map over a weekend, reassure the Houston billionaires, gladden the Prime Minister, and give status to the beleaguered Notley.
For this boon to Western Canada I can claim no personal benefit, seated as I am on a tree farm in Eastern Ontario, drawing an indexed pension, and with no desire to enter politics at this late stage in my life.
Protests and pruning
March 16, 2018
Yesterday in the Globe and Mail I read profiles of seven protesters at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline construction site. Every one of them looked like someone I would willingly accept as a colleague and friend. So why are we on opposite sides over the expansion of a pipeline to tide water?
As a retired teacher in Leeds County, Ontario, I can do my bit for the environment at this time of year by pruning the many acres of young black walnut trees I grow on the property. But land is plentiful here.
Were I to find myself in Vancouver, I suppose I’d likely spend my days at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline Expansion site with the other well-meaning retirees.
There is so little flat ground out there.
In the Ontario countryside I’ll bet at least some of the protestors would be making maple syrup at this time of year and thoroughly enjoying the work.
Lever of power
February 2, 2018
The Jian Ghomeshi trial pitted a very popular CBC radio personality against a number of prominent women who claimed that Ghomeshi assaulted them. In the courtroom the complainants proved no match for the exceedingly focussed woman who defended her client. No one doubted the survivors of abuse in this case, but the law found otherwise.
The pendulum had swung too far. A correction was inevitable, and over the last year it has taken the form of the #MeToo whateveritis which has relied upon public shaming on social media, rather than the court of law, as a way of finding redress.
Over the last two weeks in Canada we have seen the #MeToo tsunami sweep over our political world, both at the federal and provincial levels.
The sexual assaults have proven relatively straightforward: an aggrieved survivor or two can bring down a target at long range, without the necessity to reveal proof or even her name. Hearsay evidence is fine in the court of public opinion and politics, because everyone agrees that power imbalances make for taboo sex.
Thus #MeToo provided a slick way to get rid of a couple of ineffectual leaders for the Ontario Provincial Conservative Party in the run-up to an election.
But when the complaint against a quadriplegic man for saying “You’re yummy” in an elevator is equated with attempted rape, there’s something wrong here, even if the guy is a creep.
And how about when a slammed door, or shouting in the presence of subordinates becomes grounds for an anonymous complaint? Or how about a rival for a committee position writing to the party leader that she would not feel comfortable alone in a room with the named MP?
Witch hunts have a long and ugly tradition. They never had to do with witchcraft, but with economic competition. For example, most of the accusers of witches in the medieval era were physicians, and the accused, midwives who competed with them.
In every era when there’s been widespread fear of a hidden enemy, character assassination has become a lever of power.
It appears to me that there’s no mechanism in place to protect the #MeToo complainants and their targets from trivialization. Because of the lack of evidence of even genuine complaints, trivial and false reports must necessarily receive equal status. The process of reductio ad absurdum can’t be avoided. There will always be venal adversaries and those pursuing trivial, personal beefs from behind the cloak of anonymity which social media provide — as long as they work.
Who has the most to gain in Patrick Brown’s fall?
January 27, 2018
This week’s sudden departure of Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown left many viewers not knowing what to think.
From a historical perspective it was easy. The last two PC leaders scored own- goals during their election campaigns. John Tory promised full funding for religious schools in Ontario. Tim Hudak’s difficulties with basic mathematics led to an implied promise to fire 100,000 provincial public servants in order to balance the budget. So Patrick Brown’s alleged seduction efforts easily fit into an existing narrative of Progressive Conservative leaders shooting themselves in the foot to allow another Liberal victory.
I distrust political narratives. Considering that the sins brought forward in this case allegedly occurred about a decade ago while Brown was still a backbencher in the Harper Government, I find it hard to believe that the timing of this scandal does not have more to do with the preparation of some individual or group for the June provincial election campaign than any sense of moral indignation.
Patrick Brown is out, his career destroyed by rumours from two complainants and his sudden and utter repudiation by his own party. At what point does the initially positive energy of #MeToo degenerate into a witch-hunt mechanism available to cut-throat political operatives?
In a column two days ago The Toronto Star’s Rosie DiManno famously asked, “Show me a male over the age of 16 who hasn’t asked a female (or another male) to ‘Suck my d—.'”
But PC MPP Lynn McLeod created a tizzy Friday morning when she told a reporter that she had reported Brown’s womanizing to the party executive two or three times last fall. After a caucus meeting she hastily backtracked on that statement, explaining that she had told a friend, Dimitri Soudas, at that time a volunteer setting up a war room for the Brown campaign. This left in the clear the four executives who had resigned so abruptly when the scandal broke.
McLeod further credited ex-NHL star Eric Lindros with the initial source of the rumours. Intrepid reporters from competing media (CTV exclusive scoop, eh?) canvassed bars in Barrie and seemed to have little difficulty unearthing rumours about young women “going to Brown’s house” and one bartender’s comment about the non-drinking Brown’s “peacock behaviour” in the local bar scene.
This coup just doesn’t sound like something Kathleen Wynne would get up to. Her policies may have many Ontario voters on edge, but she has no history of going for the ad hominem cheap shot.
On the other hand columnists this week have had no difficulty finding sources to speak about the split in P.C. ranks over Brown’s win of the leadership. Hostile takeover, voting irregularities, “instant Progressive Conservatives” hinted at Brown’s machinations, while others commented about the leader’s enigmatic personality and lack of warmth.
To my mind the Progressive Conservative party were suspiciously well organized to deal with this crisis when it came up. Faced with the accusations, Brown looked around and discovered that his campaign executives had resigned en masse at the first mention of the complaint. Today caucus is calling for Brown’s expulsion, has unanimously appointed an interim leader, and are planning a leadership convention. The campaign platform is ready to go, though they’ll need to reprint the front cover with a new face.
Perhaps Brown’s fall because of his past behaviour was inevitable, and the closer to the election it occurred, the more damage it would do to Party fortunes. Perhaps Progressive Conservatives genuinely believed that he had stolen the leadership from more deserving candidates. Perhaps they had come to believe that Patrick Brown could not defeat Kathleen Wynne, despite polling numbers which showed him as the prohibitive favourite.
To conclude this column I looked through John Diefenbaker quotations for one on Conservatives eating their young, but only found this riddle: What is the difference between a cactus and a conservative caucus? On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.
Syrian refugees give blood
January 2, 2018
The Calgary Syrian Refugee Community kicked off the new year by turning out for the first blood donor clinic. Blood Services appreciated the 80-unit contribution from the group, especially because supplies are low at this time of year.
Two Syrian refugees organized it and made it happen. That’s O.K. in my book.
Check Huffington Post for photos:
the Walnut Diary 