People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones — but it’s quite enlightening when they do
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Last week, pollster David Coletto wondered aloud whether the Ottawa establishment might come to regret the Great Loblaw Wars of 2023 — the altogether idiotic fight, spurred by rising food costs, to determine who supposedly loathes Galen Weston and his business practices most.
“Kinda feel that this is opening a Pandora’s box that GR (government relations) pros (i.e., lobbyists) from all sides won’t like,” Coletto wrote on X. “Ottawa is a small town with … many connections — family, spouses, etc. — who work in politics and lobby on behalf of organizations,” he noted.
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Do any of the parties, sitting in their glass houses, really want to start accusing the others?
Hell yeah they do.
Coletto issued his prediction after the Liberals tried to deflect allegations of their excessive genuflection toward the Westons. (One can understand the Liberals’ motivation, at least. They did after all give Loblaw $12 million for new refrigerators for no damn reason.)
In the House of Commons, Housing Minister Sean Fraser noted that arch-Conservative strategist Jenni Byrne, Pierre Poilievre’s presumed campaign director, is “actually a registered lobbyist for Loblaw in Ontario.” (She isn’t, actually, but her eponymous lobbying firm and several of its principals certainly are and have been.)
The battle has only intensified since, perhaps coming to a head in the House on Wednesday.
Confronted with the notion that Byrne is “a high-priced consultant for Loblaws,” Poilievre shot back: “The prime minister’s new marketing director, Max Valiquette, did marketing for Loblaws for four years. Don Guy, the prime minister’s chief pollster, works for GT and Company, which collects cheques from Loblaws. Dan Arnold, his other pollster, also get cheques from Loblaws. Are they the ones who forced him to quadruple the carbon tax on our food?”
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Trudeau returned fire: “(Byrne) is actively on the Loblaws payroll while at the same time feeding lines to the leader of the Opposition about food prices and concocting a theory around carbon pricing and grocery prices.”
Poilievre: “The Prime Minister had someone who is his director of caucus services, named Julie DeWolfe, who is now a lobbyist for Loblaws.”
Trudeau: “The Conservatives would rather listen to their lobbyist buddy who works for Loblaw and defend the interests of major grocery retailers, instead of fighting on behalf of Canadians to bring down grocery prices.”
And so on, and so on. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh got in on the act too with a recent post on X accusing Poilievre and Trudeau of accepting campaign donations from Big Grocery. It’s unclear whether he didn’t realize that what he’s alleging is illegal — presumably he would present evidence if he had any — or just doesn’t care. (In a bizarre diversion from the anti-plutocrat campaign, the NDP also decided this week to attack Conservative MP Scott Reid for sitting on the board of Giant Tiger, his family’s discount grocery and department-store chain.)
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This, as Coletto implied, is a game of mutually assured destruction. Because when you start digging around in lobbyist registries, you quickly learn (if you weren’t aware before) that all this partisan mudslinging is mostly just pantomime from a class of multitalented strategists-cum-lobbyists-cum-staffers who all mostly get along in real life, and who are fat and happy no matter who wins the next election.
DeWolfe, whom Poilievre mentioned, is indeed listed as a principal on the GT and Company website, and is indeed registered federally to lobby for Loblaw. And the G in GT is indeed Liberal strategist and pollster Don Guy, as Poilievre said. But the T is NDP uber-strategist Brian Topp.
GT principals include veterans of many federal and provincial campaigns and ministers’ offices: Conservatives including Shir Barzilay, Julie O’Driscoll and Laryssa Waler; New Democrats including Cheryl Oates and Michelle Mungall; and Liberals including Andrew Teliszewsky and Genevieve Tomney. (None lobbied for Loblaw, it seems, but remember: Poilievre went after the company itself, not the individuals.)
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Others who have lobbied in recent years for Loblaw include Andrew Steele, former senior adviser to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, who’s now vice-president of Strategy Corp. Those who have lobbied for Metro include Christine McMillan, a partner at Crestview Strategy, who was a senior staffer in McGuinty’s office; Nicolas Descroix from Mongeau Pellerin, who was a senior adviser to Quebec’s justice and higher-education ministers under the CAQ government; and Andrew Brander, also out of Crestview, whose bio notes he was “acknowledged in The Hill Times Terrific 25 survey of top parliamentary staffers on various occasions” for his work with different ministers under the Harper government.
Melissa Lantsman, deputy leader of the Conservatives, lobbied for Walmart while she was at Enterprise Canada.
It’s insane that any of these parties should feel confident attacking others on things like this — unless they’re hopelessly deluded, or they take us all for idiots, or both.
The curtain is being lifted here, and Canadians ought to be paying attention to it. At best, it invites us not to believe the hyper-torqued nonsense coming out of politicians’ mouths. If they’re spectacular hypocrites on the question of big grocery chains, they’re only slightly less spectacular hypocrites on many other questions.
At worst, it invites us to conclude of every party, the Conservatives in particular, what has always been true of the Liberals: Partisans believe that when their leaders, ministers and siblings-in-arms do a Supposedly Bad Thing, it’s literally not the same as when the other guys did the same Supposedly Bad Thing. Because they mean well, while the others mean evil.
Either way, it’s past time to open Pandora’s box and keep it open.
National Post
cselley@postmedia.com
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OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
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