Two years into the Trudeau 2.0 Minority Term, which day will Justin call the election that only he wants?

spaminator

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Liberal Charles Sousa declares victory in Mississauga-Lakeshore federal byelection
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Marie-Danielle Smith and Sharif Hassan
Published Dec 13, 2022 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read

The early results from a Greater Toronto Area byelection Monday suggested an imminent return to government for former Ontario finance minister Charles Sousa — this time as a federal member of Parliament.


Sousa arrived at a campaign event in Mississauga and declared himself the winner on Monday night to cheers from a crowd of more than a hundred supporters, as results were still trickling in.


“As your voice in Ottawa, I want you to know that I am here to provide support, to work with you and the community, and to be pragmatic at finding the right solutions to those challenges that we face,” Sousa said during a victory speech.

“It is an honour to serve this big community and to join the team in Ottawa that shares those values.”

By Tuesday morning, Elections Canada was showing that Sousa had about 51 per cent of the vote to his Conservative opponent’s 37 per cent, with the NDP candidate a distant third at just under five per cent. Those results included nearly all the votes counted, in 233 out of 234 polls.


The Liberal party also declared victory late Monday evening, saying in a news release that this leaves it “in a strengthened position” at the end of 2022.

If that dramatic lead held as the remainder of votes were counted, it would be a negative sign for new Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, said Philippe Fournier, the creator of 338Canada, a statistical model of electoral projections based on polling, demographics and elections history.

Reacting to the early results, Fournier noted that the byelection appeared to have low turnout. The first 34 per cent of votes counted only represented about five per cent of registered voters.

Fournier said such a low number could be a sign of either “apathy or general satisfaction.” Both are good signs for the incumbents. By Tuesday morning, Elections Canada figures showed the turnout was about 26 per cent.


He suggested that if Liberals retained a significant lead, that would mean that Poilievre was “doing worse” than his two immediate predecessors, Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer.

Though Fournier warned against reading too much into any byelection result, the Liberals, emphasized the win as an indictment of Poilievre.

“Tonight, voters in Mississauga-Lakeshore rejected the reckless policies of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives,” the party’s national director, Azam Ishmael, said in a statement.

During a campaign that saw big-name Liberals dropping by the Mississauga-Lakeshore riding and federal ministers manning the phones, Sousa sold himself as an experienced decision-maker able to work with opponents across the aisle.


The former banker had lost his seat in the 2018 election that saw the provincial Liberals fall from the governing party to one without official status in the legislature.

He thanked those who helped him on the campaign during his victory speech Monday evening, saying he couldn’t have done it alone. Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and Liberal MP Iqra Khalid were both by his side.

“Nothing’s gonna change in Ottawa, regardless of the outcome of this election,” Sousa said in an interview ahead of the byelection. “So who do you want to fight for you and be there for you? I’m getting a lot of positive feedback.”

At an event for Sousa on Monday evening, campaign volunteer Patti Jannetta called Sousa a visionary and said she had heard a lot of positivity from voters.


“I am feeling really confident because I think people are confident in him,” she said at the Oasis Convention Centre shortly before polls closed.

As dozens of supporters waited for the results to trickle in, they sat around tables chatting over loud blues music played by a live band, some sipping on beer or wine. Later, the crowd swelled to well over 100 and the atmosphere became more celebratory as Sousa’s lead held.

A more modest Liberal win would simply have been “business as usual,” Fournier said before the vote. However, it would have been a very different story had the Conservative Party managed an upset.

At first glance, Monday’s federal byelection in a coveted Greater Toronto Area riding had seemed like a potential nail-biter.


It was the first contest under the Conservative leadership of Poilievre, in an area of the country crucial to his party’s chances of success in future federal elections.

And the contest, in a district the Tories won when Stephen Harper earned a majority mandate, came seven years into the tenure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose government is on its second minority stint in Parliament.

As Tories dampened expectations for their performance in Mississauga-Lakeshore, Poilievre was scarcely visible, though he tweeted his support for the Conservative candidate, Ron Chhinzer, on Monday afternoon.

Fournier said Conservatives will need to learn how to win again in the regions outside Toronto if Poilievre wants a shot at becoming prime minister.


“When you look at the riding map, the Conservatives have maxed out in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta. They could win maybe a handful more in Atlantic provinces, maybe two, three more in Quebec, maybe two, three more in B.C.,” he said.

“That doesn’t give you victory. They have to win more in Ontario. Where are the potential gains for the Conservatives? It’s into the Mississaugas and the Scarboroughs.”

The byelection was announced after Sven Spengemann, the former Liberal MP, announced earlier this year that he would resign to pursue a new job at the United Nations.

Final results in Monday’s contest will not be tabulated until local special ballots are added to the tally, beginning on Wednesday.
 

Taxslave2

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When you look at the riding map, the Conservatives have maxed out in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta. They could win maybe a handful more in Atlantic provinces, maybe two, three more in Quebec, maybe two, three more in B.C.,” he said.
What this tells us is that elections are rigged to prevent the west from taking control of the country. There are a lot more sq km of country that are conservative than liberal. We must crane how we are represented so there is equality.
 

IdRatherBeSkiing

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What this tells us is that elections are rigged to prevent the west from taking control of the country. There are a lot more sq km of country that are conservative than liberal. We must crane how we are represented so there is equality.
Sq Km's don't vote. As long as 1 person = 1 vote you will get unbalance unless everybody lives spread out.
 
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The_Foxer

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I think the answer is proportional representation. Geographic area is removed from the equation. How the votes are distributed mean nothing.
But it isn't removed, it just becomes less apperent. But you would still have ontario and quebec deciding who was in power and therefore what the priorities were. Except now you can't even get your local rep to listen to you because he doesn't care, he just cares about what canada as a whole thinks. If you live in saskatchewan he doesn't care that you're pissed as long as all the people in ontario like what he's doing.

The real solution is to move to a system that gives more powers to the provinces and away from the feds, and move the tax dollars as well. Now you've got provincial gov'ts answerable to the people of that province making decisions for the people of that province instead of exploiting smaller provinces to win votes in larger ones. Half the things the feds do (or more) should be none of their business in the first place.
 
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Ron in Regina

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Not in any polls in Canada. CHina, maybe.
Well, on that note, maybe it’s time to dust this thread off ‘cuz the threat of an election by Trudeau is rearing it’s pompous head:

Monday was another day of political games on Parliament Hill. As Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives continued to try to get Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff to testify, the Liberals did everything they could to stop that from happening, including threatening an election.

The Conservatives put forward a motion for debate, calling on Katie Telford, Trudeau’s closest advisor, to testify on China’s election interference. MPs will vote on the motion Tuesday and if passed, it would increase the pressure for Telford to appear as she has twice before on other issues.

Of course, the Liberals haven’t ruled out making the vote on the motion a matter of confidence, meaning if all the opposition parties vote as one, Trudeau could trigger an election. That’s how desperate the Liberals are to stop Telford from appearing; they’d rather face voters than have Telford testify.

It’s almost like she and they have something to hide.
Time and again, the Liberals raised comments by Poilievre made in 2010 when he was defending the Harper government’s opposition to political staff appearing before a Commons committee. That’s not the Trump card the Liberals think it is, considering that at the time, they were arguing strenuously that political staff should appear.

In fact, in 2010, the Liberals were demanding that junior and mid-level staffers to ministers appear, not their chiefs of staff. They asserted that Parliament had the right to call any person before a Parliamentary committee.

Now, they claim calling the prime minister’s chief of staff to testify is an “unprecedented” move.

There you have it, both parties are inconsistent in their positions on political staff testifying. Both parties are hypocrites and denouncing the other for holding positions they each once held.

What is consistent is that governing parties only block political staff from testifying when what they could say might harm the government.

Which brings us to the real questions at the heart of this matter.

What does Telford know about China’s election interference?

When did she learn of the interference?

When did she tell the prime minister?

What did they do with this information?

Back to the theme of political games.

Jagmeet Singh and the NDP have supported the idea of calling Telford to testify at committee but, on Monday, wouldn’t say which way they would vote come Tuesday. Singh and his caucus were meeting Monday night to discuss the issue, and there were no doubt discussions with the Liberals about what the NDP could get for voting no.
1679368844881.jpeg
See, when it comes to Canadians knowing about China’s attempts to meddle in our elections, what matters is what is best for the parties, not the public.
 

Ron in Regina

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In what is becoming a familiar pattern for the Trudeau government, the Liberal Party has once again gone all-out on a contentious political issue only to abruptly back down with minimal explanation.

Tuesday yielded two such instances, in fact.

Liberal Party House Leader Mark Holland began the week by delivering the explosive news to the House of Commons that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had refused a security briefing on the issue of electoral interference. In other words, Poilievre was a hypocrite who was trying to get Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired over his neglect of electoral interference while being blasé about the issue himself.

But in a 20-second point of order on Tuesday, Holland said that, actually, no such briefing had been offered. “I apologize for the confusion,” he said ???

And then, after spending weeks in a no-holds-barred drive to shield Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff from Parliamentary inquisition, the Liberals suddenly decided it was fine.

Since March 8, the Liberal Party has staged a days-long filibuster and even threatened a confidence vote in order to block chief of staff Katie Telford from answering a summons to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee. But on Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s Office suddenly announced that Telford would appear before the committee in order to “make Parliament work.” ???

In February 2022, the Trudeau government insisted on maintaining its invocation of the Emergencies Act even after the Freedom Convoy’s leaders had been arrested and their bank accounts frozen.

“The job’s not yet done,” said Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair on Feb. 20. At the time, Canada had no active Freedom Convoy blockades or protests, but Blair maintained that “the reasons why we had to bring forward these measures, unfortunately, still exist.”

On Feb. 22, the Trudeau government even put the issue to a confidence vote – ultimately forcing the NDP to back an indefinite extension of the Act on pain of triggering an election. “We share the concern of many Canadians that the government may misuse the powers in the Emergencies Act,” NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said at the time, before saying he had “reluctantly” backed the government’s position in order to evade an election call.

And then, within hours of the vote, Trudeau unilaterally rescinded the Emergencies Act on Feb. 23, declaring “the situation is no longer an emergency.” ???

Another dramatic about-face occurred just last month over Bill C-21, a piece of proposed Liberal legislation that would have ushered in the largest single gun ban in Canadian history.

Even as the bill generated blanket opposition from hunters, outfitters, First Nations groups and even rural MPs from their own caucus, the Liberals spent months accusing opponents of “disinformation” and maintaining that the measure would “not ban hunting rifles” — a claim that was directly contradicted by the bill itself.

On Feb. 3, however, House Leader Mark Holland quietly withdrew the most controversial aspects of the bill with the explanation only that they had “gaps and problems.” ???
 

Ron in Regina

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Here we go again, ‘cuz gotta chop Jugnutz off at the knees, and jump in before the ridings change in the Conservatives favour.

There are good reasons to believe that Trudeau is looking at this fall as a potential window for calling an election. He’d still be able to hold it under the current electoral map. The new one adds a number of seats that are bound to go Conservative.

If Trudeau makes his call just prior to the return of Parliament in September, he gets to campaign all summer on the government’s (= YOUR) dime and, from June until election day, there will not be a single question period where Poilievre can shine. Ministers would be free to travel and make announcements for months without any of it being counted as an electoral expense.

It’s worth bearing in mind that of the five political parties represented in the House of Commons, the only one to have never had a woman as leader is the Liberal Party, ‘cuz it’s 2015 and Feminism or something…

In the meantime, the upcoming Liberal convention will be anything but the usual snooze fest. Expect Trudeau to deliver a barn burner where every word has been weighed (= scripted, regardless of what questions are asked) in the full knowledge that every phrase will be parsed, etc….

“This one will be the most important election since WW111, and Climate Change, and look over there ‘cuz abortion, & something is happening in the US so we have to be reactive in Canada even though it’s not relevant to us!!!”
 
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Ron in Regina

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“This one will be the most important election since WW111, and Climate Change, and look over there ‘cuz abortion, & something is happening in the US so we have to be reactive in Canada even though it’s not relevant to us!!!”
But…what if someone took away one of the favourite empty Liberal threats, like this?:

If anyone doubted that this country’s English-language and French-language news narratives can exist entirely independently, consider what Quebec’s status-of-women minister Martine Biron did this week without hardly anyone in English Canada noticing: She proposed to cement via legislation a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

You’re not supposed to talk about abortion legislation in Canada — certainly not if you’re pro-life, but not if you’re pro-choice either. Legislation would violate Canada’s supposedly sacred legal vacuum on abortion, we are told, unique though it may be among developed nations. Open the door to try to enshrine women’s rights in law, we are warned, and heaven knows what anti-choice nightmares might charge through.

If you ask me, those fears are wildly overblown — but at the same time, from a pro-choice standpoint like Biron’s, there’s no need to pursue legislation. If she persists in this endeavour, however, it could be bad news for the federal Liberals and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“What I want to consecrate is the principle. I want to hang it on the wall,” Biron told La Presse. “I want us to say that this right is a right in Quebec, we believe in it and we want to protect it.” Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette has offered Biron “a small team of lawyers” to explore the option, La Presse reported, and apparently she made Premier François Legault aware of her intentions before entering politics last year. Biron acknowledged that she was treading on federal jurisdiction; if Ottawa wanted to legislate on the matter itself, she said, that would take precedence.

Examined on its merits, Biron’s rationale is neither novel nor compelling. She was apparently inspired by an assignment in Washington, in her previous life as a Radio-Canada journalist, at the time of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Naturally, that decision caused worry among abortion advocates in Canada, and many of Canada’s more doctrinaire pro-lifers were pleased with it.

But the United States is, after all, a different country.

And if anything Canadian pro-lifers’ jobs are more difficult now than they were before: Certain U.S. states seem to be competing to enact the cruellest abortion legislation they can, public opinion be damned.

“Since 1988 … there have been 48 attempts by a member of Parliament, via a private member’s bill, to restrict women’s right to abortion,” Biron told La Presse. “Who says the 49th won’t (succeed)?”

No one says that, I suppose … except the leader of every party in the House of Commons. But neither Biron nor anyone on Parliament Hill can make a law that says no MP shall ever in future try to amend the law.

Let’s say Biron’s idea gathers steam. Accepting the sacred obligation to tread extremely lightly around Quebec, where would that leave Trudeau?

He can’t accuse Biron of being a closet anti-abortionist, the way he would a conservative proposing such a measure.

Every party in the National Assembly is resolutely pro-choice. And he can’t criticize the idea all that harshly either, since he himself has mooted it. After the Roe v. Wade decision, Trudeau agreed abortion rights were under threat and wondered aloud how they might be strengthened: “Maybe it’s legislation, maybe it’s not legislation,” he said. “Maybe it’s leaving it in the hands of the Canadian Medical Association.”

At the very least, persistence on Biron’s part would threaten what has been a scandalously successful schtick for Trudeau and Co.: They trot out the spectre of abortion restrictions every four years (or as needed) for partisan purposes, while doing not much of anything in the meantime to address pro-choice concerns over accessibility.

The pointy end of the government’s stick thus far has been clawing back all of $64,850 in health-care funding from New Brunswick, this year, for providing allegedly insufficient access to abortion???

More people than ever seem to have cottoned on to this grift: The past two election campaigns have featured pushback from abortion-rights advocates quite rightly asking what the Liberals have done for them lately.

For the Liberals nowadays, however, it’s full schtick ahead.
 
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Ron in Regina

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Three out of four. The author failed to whimper "These days ya just can't. . ."

Poor little righties. They get so upset when somebody disagrees with them.
Yep, I concur with your assessment of the situation. It’s a story about Martine Biron, a Pro-Choice Quebec Politician who would like to codify Abortion Legislation into Quebec law….& NOBODY is against what she’s doing…& the author is just wondering why she’s bothering with this, and I have no problem with it.

NOBODY is disagreeing with her. NONE. It’s a non-issue for elected officials and that’s the punchline. It’s not the bogeyman topic that it’s dragged out and dusted off periodically to pretend that it is, but it just isn’t.

So, who’s upset? Really, nobody. Coalition Avenir Québec happens to be a Centre-Right Quebec Political Party, but who cares? Poor little righties…with their Pro-Choice Pro-Abortion legislation proposal there. Such bastards. Oh well…it’ll just remove it from the conversation like the non-issue that abortion is in this country.

It’s here, it’s not going away, no political party provincially or federally would touch it, and it’s just an empty finger pointing threat to accuse others of that wouldn’t touch it anyway. Who’s crying again?

If/when Martine Biron’s proposed legislation goes through, who will it really affect? Only those that try to finger point towards others that they might want to touch something that they aren’t going to anyway. Yep, poor little righties like Martine Biron. Honestly, post #298 appealed to my sense of humour.