Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says there are no current plans to deploy the military to deal with protests besieging downtown Ottawa and that no one has officially requested the option.
“One has to be very, very cautious before deploying the military in situations engaging Canadians. It is not something that anyone should enter in lightly,” said Mr. Trudeau, when asked Thursday about the protests during a virtual news conference on child care in Manitoba.
“As of now, there have been no requests and that is not in cards right now.”
That said, the Prime Minister added he sympathizes with Ottawa residents who are looking for an end to the chaos, which has seen the harassment of pedestrians, truck horns blaring, and the shutdown of the downtown Rideau Centre mall – one of the largest in Canada.
“The people of Ottawa deserve to have their lives back, their neighbourhoods back,” Mr. Trudeau said.
He said the federal government is prepared to assist local authorities with the services of the RCMP and intelligence services.
On Wednesday, Ottawa police Chief Peter Sloly said all options are on the table for dealing with the protests, including calling in the military to end the continuing demonstration that some councillors have described as an “occupation.”
OTTAWA MAYOR DENOUNCES MPS – Ottawa’s mayor is calling on several Conservative MPs and a senator from Saskatchewan to apologize for praising the anti-vaccine mandate protest that has brought the capital’s downtown to a standstill for close to a week. Story here.
WORRIES IN QUEBEC ABOUT TRUCKER CONVOY – With tensions mounting in Quebec City over the prospect of a disruptive trucker convoy, the political class and police have teamed up to make a pitch for order despite the uncertainty in the air. Story here from The Montreal Gazette.
QUEBEC MP DENOUNCES CONFEDERATE FLAGS IN PROTEST – The chair of the Parliamentary Black Caucus is denouncing the display of Confederate flags during the protests in Ottawa. “Let’s not mince words. The Confederate flag is a symbol for slavery. Whips deformed Black bodies, forced labour, mangled limbs, torture almost always preceded lynchings,” Greg Fergus, the Liberal MP for Hull-Aylmer told Parliament. Story here from CTV.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
O’TOOLE OUT; BERGEN IN AS INTERIM TORY LEADER – Candice Bergen is now the interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada after the party caucus ousted Erin O’Toole as leader, delivering a stunning rebuke of his brief tenure and triggering the party’s third leadership race in seven years. Story here. CP has an overview here of some possible contenders for the full-time leadership.
BOOSTER DRIVE SLOWING – Canada’s COVID-19 booster drive is slowing despite mounting evidence that an additional vaccine dose is needed to maintain strong protection from severe illness caused by SARS-CoV-2, according to a Globe and Mail analysis of uptake across the country. Story here.
CONSUMERS DICTATING RATE HIKES: MACKLEM – Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said the pace of interest rate increases this year will depend to a significant extent on how quickly consumers run down excess savings they have built up over the course of the pandemic. Story here.
CARTER OUT AS MAYORAL ADVISER – Stephen Carter, a veteran Alberta political operative who has worked with former premier Alison Redford and former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, is out as chief of staff to Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek’s after a little over three months on the job. Story here from The Calgary Herald.
THIS AND THAT
The projected order of business at the House of Commons, Feb. 3 is here.
PREMIERS NEWSER – Canada’s premiers will be holding a virtual news conference on Friday, with British Columbia Premier John Horgan, chair of the Council of the Federation of premiers and territorial leaders, chairing the proceedings. Health care is likely to be the key topic. Parliamentary Reporter Kristy Kirkup wrote here on the premiers stepping up their campaign to increase the Canada Health Transfer.
THE DECIBEL –On Thursday’s edition of The Globe and Mail podcast, political columnist and writer-at-large John Ibbitson argues that the infighting in the Conservative Party of Canada that led to a vote that this week ousted Erin O’Toole as party leader is not just bad for their supporters, but bad for Canada as a whole.
Here’s an excerpt:
Menaka Raman-Wilms, host: How would you describe the current state that the Conservative Party of Canada finds itself in?
John Ibbitson: “I think the Conservative Party of Canada is in a very vulnerable, fragile state. It is in danger of turning into the kind of schism that we saw in the 1990s when you had the Reform Party representing the western part of the Conservative movement and the Progressive Conservatives representing the centre in the east. Before it, Stephen Harper was able to unite the two parties in some ways. It’s also like the 1930s and ‘40s where the Conservatives lost one election after another, changed leaders after every election and the Liberals were able to govern for decades as a result. That doesn’t have to be the Conservative Party’s future. But it’s a risk now.”
Private meetings. The Prime Minister made an early learning and child care announcement virtually with Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson, then held a media availability. The Prime Minister also participated in a round table with Winnipeg teachers about their experience as educators during the pandemic, and was also scheduled to virtually visit Country Corner Donuts, a local shop in Regina.
LEADERS
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh held a virtual news conference on the opioid crisis.
PUBLIC OPINION
HOW CANADIANS FEEL ABOUT OTTAWA PROTESTERS – Two out of three interviewed for an Abacus Data nationwide poll feel they have “very little in common with how the protesters in Ottawa see things,” while 32 per cent say they “have a lot in common.” Details here.
OPINION
The Globe and Mail Editorial Boardon why Canada needs a progressive Conservative party: “The Conservatives who defenestrated Mr. O’Toole are misunderstanding Canada, Canadians and even Canadian conservatism. Canada is not America. Its people aren’t, its problems aren’t, its answers aren’t and its conservatism isn’t. Our politics simply aren’t as polarized, though Conservatives and Liberals alike have of late been trying to change that. Our parties have traditionally won by appealing to the middle and the reasonable. And by – however a dirty word this has become – compromising. This is coalition country. Big, broad tents. It is not a land of extreme political faiths. Please hang up and try your call again, you have the wrong number.”
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail)on former federal Conservative leader Erin O’Toole: “Mr. O’Toole’s sudden ouster was rough, but not unique. Ask Tom Mulcair, who was dumped hard by the NDP after he failed to win the 2015 election. Both leaders lacked a deep connection to the grassroots of their party that might have saved their leadership after a losing campaign. Mr. O’Toole’s own party hardly knew him. He won the leadership on the third ballot as a lesser-known candidate in a pandemic campaign that was mostly virtual, and therefore lacked a lot of face time. Then he changed political persona. He didn’t have a big constituency of Conservatives who felt that they’d walked the long road with him.”
Lawrence Martin (The Globe and Mail)on the powder-keg party having blown itself up again: “Don’t rule out a Peter MacKay bid, a close colleague of his tells me. The former leader feels he has considerable support in caucus and that he is a candidate who can bridge the party divide. Before he was sacked, Mr. O’Toole issued a final appeal on said divide, saying there were two possible roads forward. One is “angry, negative, and extreme. It is a dead end.” “The other road is to better reflect the Canada of 2022. To recognize that conservatism is organic, not static, and that a winning message is one of inclusion, optimism, ideas and hope.” Sounds right. But the powder-keg party probably has other ideas.”
Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail)on how the vaccination-tax flip-flop caps a bad month for Quebec Premier François Legault: “The year has not started off well for François Legault. The Quebec Premier seems to have lost the magic touch that allowed him to sail through the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic with an approval rating that was the envy of his peers across Canada. His once uncanny political judgment has failed him in recent weeks – first, when he reintroduced a hated nighttime curfew, and then with his vindictive vow to tax unvaccinated Quebeckers. Both measures flopped spectacularly because they were transparent attempts to divert public attention away from uncomfortable truths.”
Omer Aziz (Contributed to The Globe and Mail) on why what’s happening in Ottawa is an assault on democracy: “The truckers’ movement is no longer a demonstration for freedom or vaccine mandates, but a well-fundedassault on democracy. As one organizer put it, their mission was to “compel the government to dissolve government.” We must be clear about what took place in Canada last weekend: an attempt to alter government policy by force – while masquerading as a rally for freedom. More dangerously, it was a movement insidiously co-opted by white nationalists and their far-right allies.”
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WINNIPEG – The federal New Democrats have kept a longtime stronghold in the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg.
The NDP’s Leila Dance won a close battle over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, and says the community has spoken in favour of priorities such as health care and the cost of living.
Elmwood-Transcona has elected a New Democrat in every election except one since the riding was formed in 1988.
The seat became open after three-term member of Parliament Daniel Blaikie resigned in March to take a job with the Manitoba government.
A political analyst the NDP is likely relieved to have kept the seat in what has been one of their strongest urban areas.
Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh worked hard to keep the seat in a tight race.
“He made a number of visits to Winnipeg, so if they had lost this riding it would have been disastrous for the NDP,” Adams said.
The strong Conservative showing should put wind in that party’s sails, Adams added, as their percentage of the popular vote in Elmwood-Transcona jumped sharply from the 2021 election.
“Even though the Conservatives lost this (byelection), they should walk away from it feeling pretty good.”
Dance told reporters Monday night she wants to focus on issues such as the cost of living while working in Ottawa.
“We used to be able to buy a cart of groceries for a hundred dollars and now it’s two small bags. That is something that will affect everyone in this riding,” Dance said.
Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre placed a distant third,
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the Liberals have “all sorts of reflections” to make after losing a second stronghold in a byelection in Montreal Monday night.
His comments come as the Liberal cabinet gathers for its first regularly scheduled meeting of the fall sitting of Parliament, which began Monday.
Trudeau’s Liberals were hopeful they could retain the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but those hopes were dashed after the Bloc Québécois won it in an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.
Louis-Philippe Sauvé, an administrator at the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, beat Liberal candidate Laura Palestini by less than 250 votes. The NDP finished about 600 votes back of the winner.
It is the second time in three months that Trudeau’s party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives defeated the Liberals narrowly in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls.
“Obviously, it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold (the Montreal riding), but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it,” Trudeau told reporters ahead of this morning’s cabinet meeting.
When asked what went wrong for his party, Trudeau responded “I think there’s all sorts of reflections to take on that.”
In French, he would not say if this result puts his leadership in question, instead saying his team has lots of work to do.
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will hold a press conference this morning, but has already said the results are significant for his party.
“The victory is historic and all of Quebec will speak with a stronger voice in Ottawa,” Blanchet wrote on X, shortly after the winner was declared.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party had hoped to ride to a win in Montreal on the popularity of their candidate, city councillor Craig Sauvé, and use it to further their goal of replacing the Liberals as the chief alternative to the Conservatives.
The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes.
Singh called it a “big victory.”
“Our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start,” he said on social media.
“Big corporations have had their governments. It’s the people’s time.”
New Democrats recently pulled out of their political pact with the government in a bid to distance themselves from the Liberals, making the prospects of a snap election far more likely.
Trudeau attempted to calm his caucus at their fall retreat in Nanaimo, B.C, last week, and brought former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on as an economic adviser in a bid to shore up some credibility with voters.
The latest byelection loss will put more pressure on him as leader, with many polls suggesting voter anger is more directed at Trudeau himself than at Liberal policies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
