Everybody hates Doug Ford but he might win reelection anyway
First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent direct to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Sundays), sign up here.
British MP Sir David Amess was brutally stabbed to death Friday during a meeting with constituents in a Methodist church east of London . This is the second time in five years that a British MP has been murdered while in office, which surprisingly makes the current era one of the most dangerous in which to be a British parliamentarian . In 2016, Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed in a West Yorkshire street by a far-right extremist. For context, in the 108 years from 1882 to 1990, only six U.K. MPs were killed by political violence – and every single one was due to targeting by Irish nationalists.
Don’t be surprised if the murder of Amess has a chilling effect on public life all across the G7. After a terrorist gunman attempted to storm Parliament Hill in 2014, the result was an immediate ramp-up of parliamentary security everywhere from Australia to the U.K. In the U.K., the Conservative Party has already ordered a stop to all campaigning until a security review can be completed. Here in Canada, news of the murder has been particularly haunting for MPs who just wrapped up an election campaign that was particularly heavy on threats and security worries. “This last campaign, for me, I have never felt so unsafe,” Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner told CBC .
You can add “laughter” to the list of things that the Royal Canadian Navy isn’t good at . Last year, the second-in-command of HMCS Calgary was dismissed for disabling the warship’s smoke detectors so he could have a cigarette. In response, some anonymous navy wag wrote up a parody song about the incident entitled Smoking in the Wardroom, based on the 1973 hit Smokin’ in the Boys Room. While sailors across Canada had a good laugh at a performance uploaded to YouTube, navy brass absolutely lost their minds and initiated a nationwide manhunt to root out the satirist . According to Postmedia’s David Pugliese, the singer – identified by some fans as an “ Esquimalt legend ” – remains undiscovered.
Meanwhile, the military arguably has much bigger problems to address. Earlier this year, the Canadian Armed Forces’ chief of military personnel was placed on leave while he was investigated regarding an allegation of sexual misconduct. And now his replacement is also under police investigation for sexual misconduct. This happened in the same week that the incoming commander of the Canadian Army also became subject to a police investigation involving an allegation of sexual misconduct.
It looks like Doug Ford might remain premier of Ontario for another term . The province is required to hold a vote by at least June of 2022, but as we all know, Canadian parliaments have a habit lately of getting dissolved early. Although Ford is one of the most unpopular premiers in Canada, polls show that he’s apparently still the best Ontario has. A new Leger survey has the Progressive Conservatives polling at 35 per cent, more than five points ahead of the second-place Liberals.
Only days after the release of the two Michaels from Chinese detention, B.C.’s Minister of State for Trade George Chow was a VIP guest at a Huawei-sponsored event in Vancouver celebrating the Chinese Communist Party. He even waved a tiny five-starred Chinese flag. Lest his appearance be seen as an official B.C. endorsement of Beijing, however, Chow’s spokespeople helpfully cleared up the matter this week. He wasn’t wearing his cabinet minister hat while at the pro-Beijing event , his office told Glacier Media . Rather, he was just attending the event as a regular civilian who may or may not have a senior position in the provincial government that directly deals with China on a regular basis.
The House of Commons will be getting back to work on Nov. 22, more than two months after the Sept. 20 vote . While that may seem like a long time after an election that was repeatedly framed as an urgent necessity, it’s pretty standard for Canadian parliaments. One of the longest gaps still belongs to Joe Clark; after winning the 1979 election he waited more than four months to convene parliament .
This week, Alberta’s top doctor announced that a 14-year-old had become one of the province’s latest COVID-19 fatalities. There’s just one problem: The 14-year-old did not die of COVID-19. After the announcement, family members of the deceased teen took to social media to say that the 14-year-old actually died of brain cancer. Although he had an 11 th hour COVID-19 diagnosis, it was ultimately immaterial to his demise . Health Canada stats show that since the pandemic began, COVID-19 has contributed to the deaths of only 17 Canadians under the age of 19 , far less than the same number who were killed by drowning.
In a pandemic that has seen an awful lot of politicized decisions from public health officials, there is one group that has consistently hewn very close to the evidence, even when it’s unpopular. The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) was the one who recommended taking Pfizer instead of AstraZeneca – even as the entire political establishment yelled at them . And now, the National Post’s Sharon Kirkey notes that NACI has gone curiously dark : No press briefings and no interviews, even as Canada gears up for a mass-vaccination of children.
Setting aside the fact that people vote differently in elections held under proportional representation , if Election 44 had been conducted under a European-style PR system, it would have resulted in a dead tie between the Liberals and Conservatives , both of whom would have gone to Parliament with 109 MPs each (the locked-out People’s Party of Canada, meanwhile, would have scored a caucus of 21). According to a new Angus Reid Institute poll, 61 per cent of Canadians would have preferred the PR outcome .
The average price of a Canadian home rose by an incredible 21.4 per cent over the last 12 months , according to the latest Royal LePage House Price Survey . It’s a surge way beyond anything else seen in the G7. The only thing that comes close was a wacky few months in 1989 Italy when housing prices briefly spiked at a faster rate. As to why this is happening, Royal LePage has a very simple answer: Canada isn’t building nearly enough homes .
Ottawa isn’t the only one on a debt binge lately. On the eve of the pandemic, Canada’s household debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 101.3 per cent. Now, it’s at 119.6 per cent. Writing for the Financial Post, David Rosenberg and Julia Wendling note that it’s kind of hard to restart an economy when everybody’s up to their eyeballs in debt.
Ken Boessenkool is among the handful of former Stephen Harper hacks who can say whatever they want now that they’re out of politics. Writing for The Line , this former Reform Party stalwart had a piece of extremely controversial advice for the Conservative Party: Embrace a carbon tax or die . Of course, Boessenkool’s Tory carbon tax would be counted as a 100 per cent credit against the income tax, rather than its current role of being a convenient new revenue stream.
In the wake of Chinese-Canadians running screaming from the Tories last election , Rupa Subramanya noted that it’s not unprecedented for Canadian diaspora communities to decide elections based on foreign policy issues that are virtually invisible to the rest of the electorate. She pointed to the example of 1998, when thousands of Indo-Canadians lost favour with the Liberal government of Jean Chretien after he criticized a series of recent Indian government nuclear tests. “Most Indo-Canadians were supportive of India’s nuclear ambitions … for most other Canadians, however, it was a non-issue,” she wrote .
In recent months, several international outlets have begun referring to Vancouver as the North American epicentre of anti-Asian hate crime . Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd isn’t so sure . The moniker is based entirely on the fact that reported incidents of anti-Asian hate crime rose from 12 to 98 in 2020, but Todd highlights a few holes in the data – as well as some not tremendously ingenuous actors who are highly invested in the image of Vancouver as a racist backwater.
We bring this up a lot in this newsletter, but the Liberals remain hell-bent on a plan to usher in the most censorious internet in the free world . Chris Selley writes in a recent column that if the Conservatives can’t rally Canadians against a draconian crackdown on freedom of speech, it would be a pretty big black eye both for them and the country at large.
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Editor’s note: This post has been updated from its original version to correct the description of the nature of the investigation into the recent appointee to the Canadian Forces’ chief of military personnel.
MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.
Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.
Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.
Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.
Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.
Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.
“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”
The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.
“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”
The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.
“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.
Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.
Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.
It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.
“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”
A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.
If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.
The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.
As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.
Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.
“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.
The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.
He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.
The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.
HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
__ Seitz reported from Washington.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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