the Walnut Diary

Like every other political junkie in the country, Sunday I remained glued to my laptop as the various party leaders responded to the dropped writ on a fine morning in August.

Justin Trudeau made me wait for hours. My son’s working on Burnaby North–Seymour Liberal candidate Terry Beech’s campaign so he kept me posted as to the start time. I was a bit annoyed that Justin couldn’t have gotten up earlier the way Elizabeth May of the Green Party did with her group, but the random camera shots of the podium overlooking the Vancouver shoreline in the lead-up to the speech proved quite interesting in their own right. The guy in charge of arranging the group behind the podium was a study in unobtrusive activity.

At length the candidates drifted in and climbed onto the raised stage behind the podium. Where’s Terry Beech? At last he arrived, moving to his assigned place between two slightly disgruntled ladies in red. Justin Trudeau followed immediately, shaking the hands of the front row as far as Terry, then moving to the podium.

Then JT turned on the charm and I gradually grew less disgruntled for the two-hour wait. He appeared to feed off the enthusiasm of the seventy-odd members of the entourage assembled so carefully behind him, delivered a well-balanced speech with gravitas, and exhausted the supply of questions from the press before leaving the podium.

“Liberals understand this: when the middle class does well, so does the entire country.” JT likely thinks it’s simple-minded to repeat his entire speech in both languages, but I wish he had made his comments about Mulcair’s plan for the $15 minimum wage (for federally-regulated employees) in English, as my hearing is questionable at any time, and even worse in French. I think the point is that only a small percentage of low-wage workers are in federally-regulated jobs. The rest will be left out of the NDP’s promised pay increase.

Another jab to the ribs of Thomas Mulcair came when he suggested that the NDP leader promises to carry on with Harper’s current universal child benefit package, thereby rewarding the rich. Trudeau looked directly at the camera: “I don’t know why Mr. Mulcair made the choices he did. Maybe he’s afraid of attacks. But I’ll tell you something, my friends, I’m not.”

Here’s the film Charlie shot:

Speaking of Mulcair’s ribs, the overwhelming impression I formed from the NDP leader’s solo performance on the lawn of the Museum of History this morning was to wonder why on earth Tom chose that dreadful suit coat for such an important event? The misplaced pad in the left shoulder made him look like a hunchback and the stitching around the collar was so uneven on my high definition screen that it looked like something a caricaturist would draw.

After first blaming Mrs. Mulcair for not dressing her husband better, I thought about the wardrobe choice a bit: Trudeau wore an expensive, elegant suit. Liz May looked as though she had been called away from an early session in her garden. Harper dressed like a mid-range funeral director. Tom Mulcair looked like some poor slob who had had to pack into an old suit to attend that same funeral, unfamiliar with collars and ties and tailored clothes.

Tom had dressed like a member of the Conservative base.

He even did his I-was-the-second-oldest-of-ten-children bit. Moreover, I suspect his handlers had adopted the famous Jack Layton trick of smiling whenever his cell phone vibrated, a signal from his corner to lighten up a bit. Mulcair beamed forth grins at random intervals during the speech. He further emphasized the awkward-on-a-podium impression by appearing to forget to take questions from assembled journalists. (In fairness, it turns out that Tom was late for Flora MacDonald’s funeral — the funeral that Stephen Harper refused to attend.)

If he was looking to poach votes from Harper’s turf, Mulcair may have succeeded. We’ll see if that ratty suit coat becomes the equivalent of Jack Layton’s cane. Not mentioning Flora’s funeral showed some class.

Tom Clark’s Global News interview with Kory Teneycke today revealed the twisted mindset behind that horrific commercial. We’ve seen that kind of thinking from mass murderers and white supremacists, but I shared Clark’s astonishment when the spokesman of Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party lifted the mask. They intend to give no quarter and they deserve no support.

http://globalnews.ca/news/2080288/full-interview-conservative-spokesman-defends-use-of-isis-video-in-attack-ad/

The spectre of Stephen Harper standing alone on a sinking ship hoves increasingly into view as high-profile cabinet members take their leave in advance of the October 15 federal election.

It’s ironic that the Harper Regime is now forced by a decimated front bench to rely upon the dubious skills and charisma of Paul Calandra and Pierre Poilievre.  The cause likely dates back to the old Reform Party resolution to get rid of MP pensions.

Remember how all Reform MPs pledged not to accept their pensions when they were first elected, but how all found it in their consciences to retire on them?

Harper’s changes to the Federal MP pension plan to take effect in 2015 may well have torpedoed his re-election chances.

Incumbent MPs may not all be financial wizards (take the NDP examples currently in circulation for instance) but having to wait an additional ten years for a full pension amounts to at least $600,000 lost dollars.  During that time increased personal pension contributions would amount to another $390,000 lost.  Perhaps the clincher is the elimination of the sweetener:  for every dollar a current MP puts into his or her pension plan, the people of Canada currently contribute $6.50.  That drops to a 1:1 ratio and an annual contribution rate of about $39,000, up from $11,000.  A pay cut of $28,000 is hardly good for one’s desire to serve the people of Canada.

Combine the pay cut with the financial hit which would accompany another term in office with its sharply increased cost of getting elected in the long upcoming campaign, with the experience of colleague Dean del Mastro facing incarceration for some of the electoral sleights-of-hand which produce an electoral victory, and it’s not hard to see why so many of the most electable members of Harper’s caucus have opted for retirement.

I have said for years that if Stephen Harper can’t win he will tear the Conservative Party down before he leaves, but I never would have suspected that the mechanism for the implosion would be as simple as a small revision in the MP’s pension plan.

UPDATE:  25 June, 2015

The news of Harper’s failure to protect Canadian milk and poultry quotas in the upcoming Trans Pacific Trade Agreement tore another major rift in the  the Conservative base last night.  Steve is definitely razzing the Tory clubhouse down on his way out with this walk away from the safe seats of Eastern Ontario and rural Quebec where the dairy industry is king.

The House of Commons Board of Internal Economy has declared that the Federal NDP owes the House of Commons 2.75 million dollars for misdirected funds and 1.2 million dollars for inappropriate postal expenses.  The speaker plans to garnish the salaries of affected MPs if they don’t pay up.  NDP leader Thomas Mulcair claims the whole thing is a partisan attempt by the Conservatives and the Liberals to slap down the party in the face of its gain at the polls, but the invoices for postage and satellite office costs, as well as the salaries of staff working in Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto while the party declared they were in Ottawa, those bills can’t be denied.

Mulcair would be wise to make this problem go away, and quickly. The NDP has a tradition that “Someone else pays.” The satellite office controversy plays squarely to this perceived weakness in their culture.

If Mulcair and company can’t get their heads around the idea of working within a budget, the university-graduate votes which have gravitated to the NDP over the Bill C-51 protest will take to the air again before election day, especially if Trudeau looks like a man who spends within his means and pays his bills.

All that working-class-hero stuff Mulcair’s using to soften his image won’t work if Canadians can’t trust him to balance a chequebook, and the rumour about the 11-times renegotiated mortgage on his house can’t inspire confidence.

Eric Grenier’s polls show a very close and unpredictable election on October 15th.  With Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system he suggests that the outcome may depend upon a butterfly effect, with mere handfuls of votes swinging the outcome in favour of any one of the three main parties.

The fluttering wings in this election might well belong to the Canadian Firearms Association and their concerns about surveillance.  While progressives believe they have a monopoly on resistance to C-51, the original Reform base, the “Back off, Government!” rural landowners, could move to fringe candidates on the right in large enough numbers to split the Conservative vote in close races.  Remember the Kill-the-Firearms-Registry movement?  How are those core Harper supporters going to like Bill C-51, the law which takes their rights away?

It might be a good time to run as a Libertarian in a lot of rural ridings.

Michael Chong appeared on CTV’s Question Period recently in conjunction with his private member’s bill which appears stuck in Senate until it dies on the order paper with the election call.

I’d never seen this fellow interviewed before.  It immediately became obvious why he was a first-round cabinet pick for Stephen Harper, and as I watched him in debate it became even more obvious why he quit the job out of principle.

Somebody should do a pre-election poll which tracks the relative positions of the three main parties if Michael Chong were to replace Stephen Harper as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.  Chong, an apparently idealistic, moderate conservative, might well draw a lot of voters back to the blue tent after Mike Harris and Stephen Harper stole their party from them.

UPDATE, 24 June, 2015

The Senate passed Chong’s bill into law.  Good.