Two Disasters

After the election, our nation is in danger of waking up to two national disasters - a Trudeau Government Re-elected and a Bloc Quebecois Revived. The only question for a true patriot strong and free is - which would be the worst disaster? 

Let there be no doubt anywhere about this - the BQ can claim there are just "nationalists" as they cunningly appropriate the CAQ agenda and thus hide their wolves' skins in the sheep's clothing of "Quebec First". But they are still separatists in the final analysis and they are likely back to inflict their peculiar brand of "humiliation" not on Quebec but on Canada of clinging to an utterly discredited scheme of archaic tribalism. They advocate a social and economic dead end for most of all the Francophone Quebeckers who ironically from time to time park their vote with their vapid tribunes.

You no doubt detect in my words a certain dismissiveness even mocking of the BQ. Surely, the sad, dismal 26 years of the Bloc have been a sometimes comical, often feckless and usually downright pointless saga. But it should not be forgotten that, after technically and laughably gaining the post of "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" in our system of government, they came within 50000 votes of helping Quebec to leave this country in just two years. Then in 2008 they almost helped to mount a coup against the democratically elected Government of Canada. Many Canadians have not forgotten that, but the Press seems to be more sanguine about it talking about the prospects of this hideous group of irrelevancies becoming the third party in our Parliament again as if they were talking about Air Canada taking over Air Transat.

But that brings me to the other disaster. Our PM has not only reinvented and reenergized Quebec separatism's agent in Ottawa, he has also ignited the first serious signs of Western  Separatism since the 1980's. The real disaster and the one far worse than the BQ zombie dawn, is the possibility that a man whose chief legacies are these dangerous threats to unity and the breaking of laws and trampling on the Rule of Law will still be PM come Tuesday. The personal tragedy of a man of bad character is about to be our national tragedy. Will CBC, the Star or CTV please take note? 

But the other options have been so numbingly bad that what should have been a no brainer, that Trudeau must go, that it is a national imperative not just a partisan call that he go i s lost on many of us. This is lost as the Left Wing leaders simply parrot or amplify his destructive economic and fiscal agenda and the Tory Leader seems to be running against himself as John Robson suggested. This is added to by a compliant and fawning Press that has repeatedly acted as nothing more than an agent for the Liberal War Room. 

Evan Solomon incredibly suggested recently that this "crazy" campaign has seen no ballot issue emerge. Well, whose fault is that? Normally, THE ballot issue in any election is always "Should the Government (read Trudeau) be Re-elected?  Instead, one can be forgiven for thinking that the issue was whether Scheer should be re-elected. If the Voters of Quebec are sanguine about parking their votes with a clownish separatist cabal, will we the Voters at least save Canada from the larger tragedy of a renewed mandate for this renegade in power? Stay tuned...

The Laugher Curve

The extent of economic illiteracy and ignorance in our country is broader and deeper than I imagined. I heard Evan Solomon cheer up a caller who thought a Wealth Tax was a "good idea" (as if someone just discovered the concept last week) by pointing out that a group of billionaires like Warren Buffet called for a top rate of 70%. Well, in Canada, the top rate kicks in at a miserly $210000 at 33%, 45% if you include provincial taxes (not including HST and municipal taxes and yet another way BTW our system is not competitive with the US - their top rate is 37% but does not kick in until US $501000 in earnings. The point is that the truly plutocratically rich do not care about the rate as it would hardly affect their bottom line and their already having made it, and, if they do care, well, that's what accountants are paid to do - help them avoid paying the real tax rate as they no doubt already do with the "lower" rates. 

In other words,  in such a system, the government almost never gets the revenues it projected it would get. Precisely because the rich person does not volunteer to surrender his income robotically according to the diktats of government. Would Mr. Solomon (who I'm guessing may make more than the top threshold) long employ an accountant who left him in that position? The UK government under Brown is just one of the many who learned this lesson when it famously failed to get the revenues it projected when it moved to a 50% top rate. Or my favourite, when the US brought in a Yacht Tax and the resulting collapse in the industry saw no revenue raised by it.

The people I'm worried about in this class warfare tax system are not the Buffets of the World who've already made their bones. I worry about the aspiring future Buffets and Bransons and Gates. I worry about them not because I have any special undying love for flinty eyed, tough, profitseeking entrepreneurs. It's the people they could employ and the communities they can enliven and rejuvenate by their ventures that I seek to shelter and elevate. These last will not prosper if their potential employers are given an incentive to curtail their activities by high marginal rates. 

The fundamental problem with most politicians' outlook on taxation is that they misunderstand its purpose. It is not a social program or a social engineer. It is not an engine of revenge against those more successful or even more fortunate than us. It is not a vehicle, above all, for something the politician likes to call "fairness". ABC's Charlie Gibson pointed out to then Senator Obama in the 2008 presidential debate that whenever the Capital Gains rate is increased, revenues go down and vice versa. Obama conceded this but said that the important thing was that it was "fair" that it be higher (obviously implying that most people who get capital gains are rich when, even then, 55% of capital gains went to people in the lower tax brackets).

Taxation is not meant to be fair. It is meant to raise revenues to supply the government's operations and debts in the most efficient possible way. What Adam Smith called "simple, fair and easy" taxes. To do this, one must strike a delicate balance between confiscation of property which is what taxes are and the fostering of the prosperity needed to finance the state.

In this sense, the billionaires can donate the money to the state now to  make up for any perceived gap they feel in what they should really be paying (and get out smelling salts to their tax lawyers). But, really I recommend they give it to the community in charity or devise their own uses for it. What they decide to do with the money will always be better than what any bureaucrat could think of doing with it anyway. If we could see the true purpose of tax this way, then maybe it would be harder for politicians to prey on our class envy.

Scheer Nerve

To read Scheer's concession speech is to contemplate lost promise and opportunity. Scheer said that Canada was built on Conservative values and would get back on track, get people out of poverty with them, amongst these being balanced budgets, free markets and small government. Would have been nice of he had come anywhere near close to waxing that eloquently about actual conservatism DURING the campaign. Balanced budgets were only to occur five years from now. Tax cuts were only for the poor. Free markets are..."Oh, sorry, I was too busy drinking my milk when I tried to speak on that".

One wag said that Scheer should not be blamed for losing, but the Party's "lame" platform. Oh, hey, wait a minute, doesn't the Leader of a Party have SOME say on what's in the Platform? Excuses will not cut it, sir. Start rediscovering those conservative ideas that are proven to work and learn to talk about them eloquently or...just who would take over if he left? Baird, MacKay, Rempel, Poilievre? OMG Can we start that National Jason Kenney Clone Program soon? Again, I nominate Max Bernier as Scheer's official ventriloquist as Bernier does need a job now. And, sadly, I am not really sure that passion, conviction and vision can be taught or put on.

Then you read him talking about how Canada is about freedom and quoting Dief's Pledge of Allegiance,"I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand up for what I think right, free to oppose what I think wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country..".   Scheer quoted this in his speech.  One is reminded of how we all, not least of which, Scheer himself, failed to live up to its credo of freedom and, in so doing, failed in our final freedom, that to vote. In Quebec, the second freedom does not hold, in the House of Commons, the third and fourth freedoms did not obtain and everywhere we are simply not free to speak without fear on most of the issues our governors are supposed to tackle. But Scheer's fear was the more egregious because he was the one person in this country who could have made that Canadian Credo of Freedom live again.

Laurier would have wept.

Mad Max Missed

No, it's not that I miss him already, which I will when I get round to it. It's the missed opportunity. Coyne had the kernel of a point when he said that Bernier missed an opportunity to present a strong message focussed on Economic growth, free markets and fiscal restraint. Instead he got bogged down in "conspiracy theories" on climate denial and immigration. Now I happen to believe that PPC policies were some of the best I've seen written on all of the issues, including the last two. I stoutly refuse to believe or accept that wanting rational immigration and environmental policies makes you a nazi or a "climate change-denier". 

However, Max undoubtedly allowed himself and others to constantly define himself as just that guy. To use the PM's favourite trope (which was actually Laurier's), there could have been more "sunny ways" from him and a far more disciplined (like a laser) focus on how his policies would undoubtedly help the average, ordinary consumer, also, by chance, voter. 

Let's take a Canadian family of four. They want to go on vacation this year and require airline tickets. The PPC's Open Skies policy would save about ( as an example)  $200 per person on those tickets: total - $800. The family has two cellphones. The deregulation of Telecomms the PPC advocate would save (based on US rates) about $100 per month: $1200. The family drinks milk and eats dairy products, poultry and eggs. The PPC's abolition of the Supply Management system for those products would save by most estimates $500 a year. The PPC's vow to drop tariffs that protect apparel industries can be expected to rake in another $600 per year (for e.g.: $50 a month from savings on clothes buys).

The total savings for a family in one year from Santa Max's proposals: $3100! And that's not even counting the priceless gains for all (including for business in savings on inputs) of better service, better choice, more competitive pricing and more vibrant business (and for dairy) export activity, not to mention a better standard of living and quality of life from these free markets. On top of that, except for the "lost" tariffs that aren't collected anyway, it costs nothing to the taxpayer. The elimination of the capital gains tax Bernier proposed would save many Canadians still more at almost no real loss to the treasury and turbocharge an economy desperately in need of defibrillation.

This one simple example of how his message could have been sold makes me weep at the lost opportunity for us all and makes it hard to feel sorry for Max, flawed trumpet that he is.

The African Addiction

If there is any continent that better demonstrates the murderous futility of Marxism, it's Africa. Maybe someone reading this Blog can tell me otherwise, but I believe every African country has experimented with it (Marxism - the experimental, untested, unknown side effects social drug of all time). I can only imagine one African nation has not used the ideology in its governance and that is Morocco, which, it is conceded, is hardly a model of Anglo-American capitalism and constitutionalism.

And what have been the results of this addiction? All but two of the African nations, Botswana and Cote D'Ivoire, are in the mostly unfree to repressed section of the "Economic Freedom Index" of the Heritage Foundation. (two, Libya and Somalia are "unranked" due to their failed state status) while 15 are in the Repressed section alone. Not surprisingly, their rankings for GDP mirror closely the bottom 95 nations ranging from the all African bottom 16 from $712 per year (Central African Republic) to Burkina Faso at just under 2000. You must go through another 21 African countries before you find more than $5000 per capita income (about $6000 for oil giant, Nigeria).

The result of this addiction has been an unmitigated disaster. It seems to know no distinction based on racial, tribal, cultural, linguistic, imperial or colonial legacy nor is it linked to religious or geographical or even strategic connection one way or the other. All Africans at some point were and many today continue to be miserated by their leadership's obsession with this ideological way of organizing society. Although tribal and religious distinctions are at the root of much of the mayhem that has occurred from time to time there, all factions seem to agree on one fatal conclusion - whoever is in  power, Karl should provide them with the manual for their economies. And it has exacerbated natural disasters like famine.

Of course, there is another thing the African "elites" have had in common - their addiction to money. What better way to make that money accessible than by confiscating it in the Marxist way and then convincing likeminded and naive foreign aid workers and UN bureaucrats to help them help themselves to more bucks? This addiction (assisted by inept, wrongminded and counterproductive aid policies, and downright hypocritical protectionist trade policies by the West) is the key reason why Africa is the only landmass never to catch the wave of prosperity in the rest of the World and is now so vulnerable ironically to the "No Strings Attached" Belt and Road programs of the insidious, poisonous, corrupting China.

For What It's Worth

Here, for what they're worth, are my election predictions and why:

Conservative - 35%, 161 seats

Liberal - 30%, 108

NDP - 19%, 30

Bloc Quebecois - 6%, 36

Green - 8%, 1

People's Party - 2%, 1

Independent - Trace element, 1 (Jody Wilson-Raybould, BC)

Maritimes - 10 C; 22 L

Quebec - 15 C; 25 L; 1 NDP; 36 BQ; 1 PPC (Bernier)

Ontario - 55 C; 54 L; 12 NDP

West/Prairies - 59 C; 1 L; 2 NDP

British Columbia - 22 C; 5 L; 13 NDP; 1 Green (May); 1 IND (Raybould)

Territories - 1 L; 2 NDP

What is particularly interesting is that I am only relying on the margin of error so called of most polls. Most of them show that it is perfectly possible that the Tories will have 35% not 32 and the Liberals go down to 29 but I give them 30, instead. Further, even if you gave ALL of the new BQ seats in PQ to the L, which is quite generous obviously, they still would lose clearly to the Tories. Essentially a tie in Ontario is plausible when you realize how exaggerated a provincial poll can be in estimating Liberal strength due to the GTA. The Tories are bound to get at least a third of the Maritimes seats (what goes up... and two coat of paint voters). I give them technically less than that. 

In the West, the people are angry and there is only one place to put that anger - the nearest candidate with blue (NOT purple!) signs. The Tories have easily swept this region before, they can do it again with a Leader from the Region with this new western rage. They still want in and a government that owes their @#$ to them is the best way to undo the damage done to them. Oh, and, at some point, as in the rest of Canada, all those Provincial Tory victories (the latest just last month in Manitoba) count for something.

IN BC, yes, you need to be a nuclear physicist to correctly guess this. I have not taken Science since Grade 9 but I'll give it a try. Many people in the Interior in particular and some of the suburbs are not thrilled with their NDP/Green government's climate fanaticism and the Liberals' refusal to intervene to stop an Albertan economic disaster turning into a BC disaster. After all, it never made any sense - BC v. ALTA? Really? Between the notorious splits that occur in many mainland seats and residual embarrassment over the antics of a PM many here viewed as a favourite son, there it is - a very, very strong Tory Minority that will essentially rely on no one (much as Harper 2006-2011 did).

As for Quebec, the 2011 figures do have a cautionary tale for me. The BQ got 6% of the vote then and still only got FOUR seats. But, even if the BQ wave thankfully does not materialize, if say a third of the new BQ seats (almost all outside of Red Montreal Island) I'm predicting each go to the Tories, Liberals and NDP/Green/PPC, the Tories would get a Majority! The 2011 figures also make my argument further for me. In that year, the NDP won 103 seats with only 30% of the vote. Also in 2011, the Tories won a majority government of 166 seats (in a House of Commons that was 10% smaller at the time) with just under 40% of the vote.

I am predicting that the Tories win the 2011 equivalent of a minority of 145 seats with only about 4% less of the vote. I am predicting the Liberals will win almost exactly the same 2011 delegation as the NDP did with the same vote %. Finally,  a seemingly big problem with my predictions is the NDP would lose about a third of their seats in the last election but win the same % of the votes. This is almost entirely due to the young leadership of Singh, an historically inefficient distribution of the NDP vote and, above all, their collapse in PQ. Our electoral system, as the PR nuts will tell you as well as poor Ms. May, can be and, on my prediction, will be cruel again.

Take the "Shy Tory Voter" effect (well proven and as recently as this year in Manitoba and Alberta and last year in Ontario and Quebec), take a teaspoon of the PPC not making an impact, throw in a big cup of "What do you mean the Economy is 'good'!",add in the youth vote turnout collapse mainly due to the PM's missteps, and throw in a dash of Liberal complacency (yes, I said complacency - why follow up a week of the usual Liberal dire desperate warnings about not "wasting" your vote on the Leftwing parties and THEN spread it about your willing accomplices in the Press and the Polling firms that you are winning?) leading to unexpectedly low Liberal turnout and my theory can make eminent sense. Oh and don't count out, as I refuse on principle to do so, a whole pint of the People deciding the Rule of Law means something to them, after all. It all should add up to an historic rejection of a one term majority government (the first since 1935). Or...so I hope!

Stay tuned!

First Brexit Pear Tree

On the First Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, A Leave Vote That Says That Were Free

On the Second Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, A Two-Faced BBC

On the Third Day of Brexit , my People gave to me, Three At Number Ten

On the Fourth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Four Meaningful Votes

On the Fifth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Five National Elections

On the Sixth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Six  Betraying

On the Seventh Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Seven Pounds Devaluing

On the Eight Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Eight Remainers Moaning

On the Eight Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Nine Fears Campaigning

On the Ninth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Ten Junckers Junking

On the Tenth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Ten Irish Borders

On the Eleventh Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Eleven Judges Judging

On the Twelfth Day of Brexit, my People gave to me, Twelve More Possible Doable Endless Deal.

Divas?

The surgeon wields his scalpel artfully but deliberately and therapeutically. The lawyer studies his brief from all sides and then argues it quietly but persuasively. The farmer toils hard and employs all that agricultural college and often generations of farming have taught him to get the greatest yield from his fields. But the politician increasingly does not exercise the arts of his trade and is downright afraid and/or unwilling to do so.

Our politicians in all parts of the West increasingly resemble what would be a strange display, indeed, of another profession - the opera singer, divo and diva. It is as if a grand opera's cast sprinkled the air with mutterings, grumblings and mumblings and stoutly refused to deliver the climactic arias, recitatives and ensembles that the libretto demands and the conductor, in increasing desperation, tries to elicit from them in vain. Right now, there are apparently three types of politician opera performers. 

First, there is the least numerous, the truly talented, bold and fearless artists who make you cry via their brilliant and moving voices. These are the divos and divas who make you ecstatic you are an opera fan or sad that you are not. In our World there are but a few pols like this - Trump, Kenney or Johnson, perhaps, on the Right. There are even fewer from the Left. Although, Bill Clinton and Obama are two of them. It feels like we had an inordinate number of them in the not so far off past - Lincoln, MacDonald, Laurier, Churchill, the Kennedy's, Reagan, the Roosevelt's, Levesque, Trudeau, Dief, Mulroney and Chretien. (No wonder LBJ used to ask of a speech being written for him,"Has it got music?") Even Nixon had an ear for the right notes (after all, he was an accomplished pianist) and relished a good fight in what he once called,"The Arena".

Then there are the second, most numerous group - the mutterers. They, again, refuse to sing openly and vigorously. They stutter and mutter, do not really like opera themselves and are perpetually suffering from stage fright. They are the men and woman we saw tonight. They are the vast majority of our "statesmen" today. If it was possible to be such, Davis, Clark, Harper and Martin were masters at it. Theresa May, Carter, Pelosi, Romney, Brown, Dole, Mondale or Ford come to mind. They resemble a young singer who is unsure of his pitch and tone in that they often do not know what the Hell they really stand for or believe in, if at all.

The third type are becoming increasingly numerous - they are the tone deaf. They have no fear in sharing with us their cacaphony. They do not realize they are bad and are assured by their adoring fans in the Press that they are great and it is only the petty, jealous or evil that do not see how truly wondrous and indispensable they are. Think the Diva in Phantom of the Opera, the Wannabes in Waiting for Guffman or Citizen Kane's second wife. They are often from the Left and grow more in their din with the hour it seems. Think Hillary, AOC, Corbyn or E. May. On the Right, Farage and Le Pen may be the bipartisan manifestation of this fell group. They know what they stand for and passionately fight for it but they send you running out of the Opera House with their often frightful noise.

The scary thing is...the Democratic Presidential hopefuls don't seem to be sure whether they want to be tone deaf screamers or revert to their more customary and natural guise as fearful mutterers. But there's not a Diva or Divo amongst the lot of them. 

They Bombed (or, Apocalypso)

When did the apocalyptic movement, that afflicts our society today via Climate Change campaigning, begin? It started with the Right Reverend Malthus, that walking talking philosophical time bomb. He of the "surplus population". A top christian, he advocated that we CAN have too many of God's children. He did not have Climate Change at hand but he did have Hobbes and his Leviathinite belief that we needed to bow down to some Lord High Executioner if we knew what was good for us: an omnisicient, all-knowing omnipotent state who would steer us away from our natural tendency to self destructive behaviour.

He had a willing accomplice in bourgeoisie like Ebeneezer Scrooge, whose own life was ok. But not if you were, well, surplus to requirements. More of us would lead paradoxically to less of us and we would die after a "short brutish" life as more of us were forced to make do with ever shrinking finite resources and, above all, less and less food. Thank God and our indomitable,inventive spirit that, in every metric respect, he was incorrect. From Malthus' time (early 19th Century) until today, the population of the earth went up but incomes went up. So, too, did the availability of not only staples but many goods that only the richest could afford in his time or that no one could afford because they did not exist.

His immediate intellectual descendants were the Darwinians and the Eugenicists whose earnest, chilling cry was for Survival to be dictated by the Fittest. Their sinister beliefs that "the line of idiots" wretches and cripples had to end (Justice Holmes, Margaret Sanger) helped justify the great totalitarians who crushed tens of millions under the jackboot of ethnic hatred and economic expedience. Mao's Great Leap Forward, Hitler's Holocaust and Stalin's endless 5 Year Plans all owed their brutalizing DNA to the Apocalypt's theory of exterminating misery by miserable extermination. Despite the cataclysmic catharses of 1945 and 1989, they still live in Pyongyang and Havana, often celebrated by today's Malthusians. As Shaw said of the USSR ("I have seen the future") so Sean Penn says of Venezuela or Tom Friedman of China.

Malthus' next disciple and prophet was Paul Erlich. Malthus would envy his best selling book title "The Population Bomb". He too predicted apocalypse (all oil gone by 1980 and food in 2000) and prescribed  megalomaniacal solutions to be applied by an all-directing and encompassing state. The opposite of what he predicted came true.The World doubled in population, found more reserves of oil than ever and saw hunger and poverty collapse. The genius of human existence, far from being a bane, was a boon. In other words, the more people, the richer. (Still, hundreds of millions were aborted as respectable Malthusians, like Justice Ginsberg, said that Roe v. Wade got rid of a lot of people we did not want).

After a merciful all too brief interlude, we were accosted again by the gloomsters. They had a new weapon that Erlich and Malthus were not smart or imaginative enough to brandish - Climate Change. A phenomenon we cannot possibly control was presented as an excuse for running our lives. "Sure, Marxism is dead but, if the astronauts tell us there's an emergency, who are we to argue?" A lesser prophet of doom came next. Al Gore won an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize for predicting climate change would drown polar bears and sink Manhattan. The happy problem for us was that his "Inconvenient Truth" was that none of it came to pass.

Today, the latest apostle, the Swedish Scoldilocks, who, in accuses us deluded growth junkies of robbing her of a childhood and bringing on her mass extinction in 10 years, wants policies and attitudes that would rob whole generations yet unborn of any chance at a childhood. The only good thing about Malthus and his followers is that they were all proven wrong in detail. The bad thing about them is the misery and destruction they cause, with grotesque -isms like "Carbon Bomb" to refer to a baby in the womb, before we finally do the right thing and ignore them even as we effortlessly prove them wrong and stun all again with our wondrous innovation, creativity and resilience.

John James Cowperthwaite - A Bureaucratic Fable

Sir John James Cowperthwaite will not be remembered by many. Most of the people who live now in Hong Kong, which he governed as Financial Secretary in the 1960's, will likely not recall him. But he deserves to have memorials built to him and posthumous international decorations awarded to him for a signal achievement for mankind. 

He architected the greatest economic miracle in modern history. His wise, humane and benevolent policy of "positive non-interventionism" - low taxation, low regulation, low spending and free trade - saw Hong Kong rise in barely a generation from being a dirt poor, resource free, refugee-packed backwater to the 10th largest economy with the 4th largest stock market in the World. And he left a legacy that should  be an instructive lodestar for us today.

His fundamental observation - that no centralized decision made by bureaucrats can ever be as wise, good or positive as that of a businessman (and that none of the businessman's mistakes can ever be counteracted by the state as well as he can). But, obviously, he must have felt the same about ordinary Hong Kongers (who he lived and worked with for 15 years before), too. After all, they were the sharp consumers whose everyday decisions enriched that businessman and of whom many were also aspiring entrepreneurs. In other words, a St. Andrews and Cambridge educated Scotsman bureaucrat of 50 realized that he did not understand the best interests of a bunch of mostly destitute, uneducated Asiatics better than they did. This was a miracle of tolerance and wisdom by the standards of any day. It is a moral and a fable that I wish more of our governors around the World would learn and apply.

My favourite aphorism of his that he offered as part of his advice for poor countries I paraphrase here: Abolish your Office of National Statistics. It only gives government an excuse for harmful intervention in the economy. Cowperthwaite, who my Wife calls the "Dr. Spock" of economic theory, thus offers us an economic blueprint and a warning for us at the same time. In that sense,  The Hippocratic Oath should be repurposed and rephrased for would be governors,"Do no Harm that your People can do for themselves."

Leaders' Debate of Last Week

Lisa Laflamme worries that the Leaders only have about 20 minutes to introduce themselves to the voters in the debate. If you cannot explain yourself and your merits and the demerits of your opponents in 20 minutes, you're in the wrong profession and it is not being a barrister. Most people will have problems tolerating listening to these people for FIVE minutes.

Laflamme pointed out how the participants have been warned that they'll be instantly nailed for getting their facts wrong. This surely misses the point. If you're an opposition leader, especially Scheer, and you let yourself get mired in reciting facts, you will be schmeared by a PM and his willing Press who have never let facts bother them when it came time to defend the Liberal Government. Andrew must show passion and maybe, occasionally, another facial expression. Passion, not facts or issues (unless presented passionately) is what wins elections in great countries. And the People are angry and they do not know why the Opposition Leader cannot articulate their anger without seeming like an opportunistic partisan.

For example, Mulroney, in the most famous debate encounter of all time made Turner, who after all was PM, the issue in 1984 by confronting him about the Patronage Scandal. But, even better, the famous "You had an option" moment came as a result of the hapless Turner saying,"I had no option." It looks at first like serendipity that Mulroney then was able to turn the tables on Turner using his own words against him on the spot, seemingly ad lib. But, no. You can bet that, being the trained lawyer he was, Mulroney had already figured out several ways to do this to Turner even if he had not obliged with his feeble riposte. But none of it would have worked without passion and yes, God help me for saying this: genuine authentic sincerity.

Similarly, Scheer, if given a chance to confront Trudeau on his corruption scandal directly should ask him:"Why did you stop the RCMP investigating SNC?" JT:"As you know, I had to because of cabinet secrecy..." AS:"Wait I thought it was the decision of the Clerk of the Privy Council." JT:"Well...I had to, you see..." AS:"No, you did not "have" to. You could have ordered the govt. to open up the books to the RCMP so that we could all have the transparent govt. you promised us in 2105, and you did not. You chose to block out the people who you work for and own the govt - the People of Canada (turns directly to the camera) On October 21, vote for me and I will help you take your govt. back!" Will it work exactly that way? No. But, there must be literally thousands of combinations and permutations of how to get across the same point and above all with passion.

If the self righteous pompous liberal factota known as the moderators sidle over to insurance licenses and Yankee passports, you say the following:"(deep sigh and face of sorrow) I have already answered that question but I will take the next minute to repeat my answer and pretend yours is a serious question but then I'm going to ask on behalf of the Canadian People that we stop playing the Liberal Trudeau game of arguing over nothing so as to avoid the woeful record of my friend the PM and stick with the issues that Canadians care about. I hope that my colleagues will agree with me that that's the best way to use our sadly limited time." Is it bold, daring maybe even arrogant? Yes.  But the other side acts like that all the time for far less noble purposes. Millions will cheer and thousands will need to take their heart pills just from the shock of Scheer saying something so tart!

Does showing passion mean you have to come across like a maniac? No. As McCain found. But McCain had the rhetorical subtlety of a battering ram. Reference re Reagan and his "There you go again" v. Carter or Harris and his smooth, gentle voice backed up  by a placid face as they no less passionately explained their (for the times) radical conservative positions. Above all, they made sure to address the people directly and into the camera.

Quebec's Interests

As we all are invited to have amnesia about why the Bloc Quebecois exist (we TROC people are too stupid obviously to understand the subtleties here), we still stubbornly note that, somewhere in what they laughably call a "Platform", is the following sentence no doubt in both languages so that we can all understand - We want Quebec to separate from Canada or some such weasel language, instead, at best. Lest we forget that when their miniature leader tells us that he's only here to protect Quebec's interests.

Where have we heard that before as we try to recover from a fog of cultural and historical amnesia no doubt created by almost 25 years of Unity and Clarity? Why,  Gilles Duceppe, that son of a clown who looked clownish in a cheese hat who, by 1997, the crisis of unity perhaps finally passed, realized that he needed to justify his existence to the usually flinty eyed voters of Quebec (of course, he felt he had nothing to justify to The Rest Of Canada). This especially as some people began to notice that some BQ mp's were more interested in their MP's salaries and privileges than they were in being the Champions of Separatism from Canada...in Ottawa. They were beginning to like just being there.

So, it worked for almost 15 years until Jack Layton and the NDP seemed to finally put a stake in the heart of this feckless vampire of Canadian politics in 2011. Most Quebeckers understood by this time that their interests did not need protection in Ottawa after 45 years of Ottawa granting indulgences to her on the constitution, language, ethnicity, energy, the environment, immigration and even foreign affairs. But now, much like his father, the PM's cowardice, leaderlessness and ineptitude especially in the campaign have incredibly revived the monster. Really, Hammer Films would have had trouble showing how the Young Frankenstein managed to do it.

And the barely loyal almost traitorous, rigorously unpatriotic Press (especially in TROC)  far from being horrified at this, seem to revel in this unwanted and dangerous freak development lap it up and only speculate about how those chump patriot money eanrers in Alberta or Saskatchewan will take it if their golden boy Scheer has to depend on the Bloc to govern. Yecch! While this Trudeau may do his father one better and invent a truly hardy and efficacious Western Separatist movement, too.

Man Bites Basketball

Here's a man bites dog story: both AOC AND Ted Cruz signed a three page letter condemning the NBA for its cowardice and greed in the face of Chinese oppression! Adam Silver, the craven NBA commissioner who backed China over Hong Kong and his own executive and thus helped spark this retort, may have worked a political miracle  But, sadly, the real man bites dog story would be if the NBA stood up to its Chinese Sugar Daddy. Think of it, Nike, Addidas and the NBA must be really hard up that they rely so much on Chinese cash that they will sell out and throw even their own people under the bus to keep the Chinese on their street corner.

And, as Trump points out, Steve Kerr and Lebron James (not to mention Colin Kaepernick and states like New York) criticize the US 24/7 in the most execrable terms about relatively trivial sins. But, when it's time to defend ordinary people against the depredations of the worst, biggest dictatorship in the World, their money and brownie points with the Chicoms are, as South Park satirized, more important than freedom and democracy or even intellectual consistency. James Harden actually apologized to the "people of China" for the executive's comments in support of protestors in Hong Kong. Doesn't he understand that most of the people of China would give their right arm to have the chance to protest their government the way that Hong Kongers are (so far) permitted to do every day? He and the NBA should apologize to them and the people of Hong Kong for lending comfort to their tormentors, the Chinese State.

It occurs to me that the same people who laugh at John Bull or Uncle Sam or call for empire, the flag and the anthem to be disavowed would be appalled that some of those brave young Hong Konger protestors  brandish Old Glory and the Union Jack as symbols of freedom and democracy.  Those who are embarrassed by patriotism about the greatest countries in the World should be embarrassed...at their own smugness, inanity and hypocrisy. Will any of these arbiters of Woke call for boycotting China, Cuba or Zimbabwe at any time about anything before they call for a boycott of Chik-fil-a, Israel or North Carolina?

And will some one (perhaps Cruz and AOC) propose a Foreign Oppressive Practices bill that would forbid companies like Google from assisting China or any other dictatorship in oppressing their people and define it as a "foreign corrupt practice".  In this imperfect world, if I had to choose, I would rather a country be free before it is financially hygienic. Isn't it more likely the latter will follow eventually (as it did for us in the 1800's) after the former is achieved? Then Google would be forced to reconcile their stated policy of refusing to help the Pentagon on pain of "sabotaging" them while helping the Red Chinese Army to censor, plunder and enslave their people.

BTW - for what it's worth, I hereby boycott the NBA.

Argument Clinic

It's just dawning on the UK that, in seeing that the EU had no intention of real "negotiation" all along, they, too, are like the customer who goes to the Argument Clinic in Monty Python expecting a fine debate and instead, after shelling out many pounds and wasting several sessions, gets a flat "yes v. no" affair. "I thought I came here to leave." "Oh. no, you came here to remain. If you want to leave, you have to pay 39B pounds first." "But I did already!" "No you didn't." "Yes I did." "No you didn't." "Yes, I did! Oh come on that was not really 3 years of me not leaving just now...!" "Yes it was." and so on...and on..."We can leave with Northern Ireland." "No you can't." "Yes I can. It's part of me!" "No it isn't. Not unless you pay another, er. 100 billion pounds." Now, perhaps, this expensive, soul-destroying, black comic charade of miserabilism will soon finally be over, if not by Halloween by the vengeful hand of the English voter. 

The EU never wanted to bargain in good faith to get a proper Brexit anymore than the clinic wanted to give the man a proper argument. They wanted to trap the UK and doom her to be a trade colony of the EU with no more rights of policy or control than, say, China had over the "trade concession zones" they were forced to surrender to the Great Powers in the 1800's.

The wonder is that it took so long for even tough guys like Gove, Mogg, Cox and Johnson, at least externally, to realize that the Euros are a bunch of bad faith, bad will losers that we should regard now as "hostes" the UK (as the govt is preparing to treat EU members who force another delay on us) and get out of it, asap. If anything, they've made any right thinking Englishman more determined than ever to leave. Not for the first time, the European has underestimated, misunderstood and misjudged the Englishman. He will pay dearly as will his familiar accomplice in British mayhem, the Irishman. Then where will be their "colony", their captive markets now? Down the loo.

That lousy KGB chemist posing as a Chancellor of Germany actually said that NI would be forced to stay in the EU customs union "forever". And the EU will last a 1000 years. And you will crush Perfidious Albion like a bug. And England will be finished as soon as you shoot down a few more spitfires. I know. We've heard it all before from you people. It's just your crass unadulterated sickening nerve in abusing a country that astounds and appals. That is the nation that has done nothing but help you down the ages, including saving your very civilization four times at least by my count at an untold cost of lives and given 100's of billions of its treasure to you. Shame on you, "friend"!

If I was on the phone with that geo-financial extortionist, I would have threatened that, if she did not make a deal happen mach schnell, I would throw her mercedes, volkswagens and porsches into the Channel, and not just the ones she wants to ship. And, after the UK has won again, and their latest megalomaniacal grab for continental power sits in tatters, they will once again not have learned their lesson. Nonetheless, it will be fun trying to teach it to them.

And woebetide the Englishman who helped the Brussels con artists. And, if any of you beasts from the Parliament, the BBC, the EU, the ECB, Dublin or the UKSC thinks that we're either Ireland, Greece or Norway, you've got another 39 billion pound think coming!

Let my people go!

Virtue Signaller in Chief

And so we are treated to the latest display of the PM's public virtue in his belated declaration that, he, JT, arbiter of all that is just and good and defender of our religious freedom (unless you secretly oppose abortion) will fight Bill 21. Now, I do not know what he intends to do to fight that thing. I agree that it is a bad thing. But more than a few reasonable people of good will (not including me) worry that, to go after it might reignite separatist feelings in Quebec (although as I recall his bungling of the pipeline file may have done that in Alberta and he doesn't seem to worry).

But, more importantly, and this is where the virtue signalling comes in, I do not know how you are supposed to fight it unless you get Quebec to kill it voluntarily unless you go nuclear constitutionally. Once the Bill was passed, the Federal Govt. could then use its Disallowance power from the Constitution to strike it down. But, it didn't and hasn't. It has until June 17, 2020 ( the anniversary of its passage) to do so according to Forsey on Disallowance in the Constitution. If it doesn't do that by then, there is no other way to repeal it. Court decision based on the Charter almost certainly will be overriden by Quebec invoking the Notwithstanding Clause. You can't otherwise legislate on it because it is an exclusive provincial competence, civil rights, under s. 92. You can't POGG it like you did with the carbon pricing scheme because it is obviously not, technically at least, a matter of national importance in that it only applies to Quebeckers or their guests within Quebec. You could make it inapplicable on federal property, federally regulated workplaces, reserves and military installations (including, ironically, the LG's office). Although I don't think the PM is even proposing what I like to call the "Dief Bill of Rights" approach.

SO the question for Justin is this -, if you are opposed to this and sweet reason does not convince Quebec to ditch 21 before June 17, will you send instructions to the Lt. Gov. to disallow it? (And, don't try to hide behind the desuetude, "it's not conventional" argument. Just because it has not been used since since 1943, it has been used over a hundred times in every province except PEI and NFLD and it was never repealed.) Or is this just a case of you posing again as a great immaculator of our rights when you have absolutely no intention of doing anything except to strike a pose? It certainly reminds one of when you apologize for wrongs you and I did not commit for a photo op. Or are you just trying to embarrass your opponents into looking like their condoning racism to get seats in PQ so you can wash all that shameful makeup off? Why haven't you even threatened to disallow yet?

Questions that I would pose to our cynicalist PM tomorrow night in French.

Meanwhile, in a CBC story about the matter, "Trudeau's challenge to Singh on Quebec's Bill 21 has Risks", Disallowance is not mentioned at all, let alone as an option for the Federal Govt. to "intervene" as JT keeps saying he will leave open as an option. This is widely interpreted to mean that he might, if it gets to the SCC, instruct federal lawyers to seek intervenor status in the case. Here there is dishonesty and ignorance on two levels not only from the PM but the Press. One, as mentioned above, even if the SCC strikes this down as  unconstitutional on Charter grounds (as I do not see how there can be any other ground based on 92), Quebec will almost certainly use 33 to override to uphold a law that allegedly 70% of the province want. Thus, the writer and the PM are both being disingenuous in imfeplying that any court intervention can ultimately kill this. 

Secondly, either by ignorance or mendacity or both or maybe fear of the Constitutional fallout, the writer (and likely most of the Press) and the PM are not at least openly considering Disallowance, the only effective, sure route for repealing. Another example of our uninformed, superficial and heavily censored debate. Would that the PM could be made of the stuff that his father was made of when he used POGG several times to do major national things that he knew to be nasty but that were perfectly constitutional, when he believed it was in the national interest. But...he's not. And the clock is ticking. What if the SCC doesn't get around to deciding the case until late June? Will he use the Reservation power to put Bill 21 on hold until the court sorts it out? In the meantime, Justin Trudeau, the rest of our political "leadership" and the Press seem to stumble along, blissfully unaware, uncaring or afraid of how to defend our rights. If only Trudeau's virtue signalling was our only problem.

Elected Dictator

How would we feel if a foreign leader attacked our PM and commented on the merits of a crucial constitutional legal case that had nothing to do with that foreign country? (say that country was the UK, the US or Australia) We would be pissed.

But, our PM (aka: Old Blackface) felt that he of the Budget Omnibus Bill, the Norman Case and MP for SNC-Lavalin had the nerve to pronounce on the "lawfulness" of the UK PM in his exercise of a right and power that he and his predecessors  here and in the whole Commonwealth (except Sri Lanka) have used unchecked for hundreds of years. 

Like a jackal, he pounced on his prey, one of our closest allies, again, at an international gathering. It's hardly a week since Blackface erupted and he is brazenly displaying his hypocrisy again. It is like he doesn't  even realize how hypocritical he is. He never loses an opportunity to be a hypocrite.

I would like to claim my patent against Lord Pannick and the UKSC on the phrase "elected dictator". I have been alerting people to this phenomenon as regards our PM. Although, a  similar concept was bruited by counsel for Nixon in the US v Nixon case when he unsuccessfully argued that the POTUS effectively has the powers of Louis XIV once elected. And good thing that he failed. I have recommended a number of ways to make our Parliament in particular truly independent of the Executive, including taking the Cabinet out of the legislature American and French Republican style and electing the Governor-General and above all, making strict party discipline illegal amongst other things.

But, the UK Parliament and the UKSC and the antics of the US Congress have made me realize that undemocratic forces can come from the other branches too. However, it does not take away from the fact that, if there is an "elected dictator" effectively existing in any of the great democracies, it is the Canadian PM. What is more, unlike the other Chief Executives (including of course the least secure of them all, the Australian PM), this one truly fits the bill for "elected dictator" pejoratively as well as technically and in form. He has eviscerated the Rule of Law, whipped his MPs into subverting the proceedings of Parliament and its committees to shelter his government from scrutiny in the midst of a coverup of likely criminal conduct whilst using cabinet confidentiality to frustrate an RCMP investigation and that of the Ethics Commissioner. All of this in aid of covering up his use of his office to try to obstruct justice and intimidate prosecutors and the Justice Minister and destroy their independence to protect a corrupt company that gave his party illegal campaign donations.

In other words, UKSC and Lord Pannick, if you want to see what a real elected dictator PM looks like in action, come to Canada and study the genuine article who dared to pronounce about how thrilled he was that his constitutional brother was haltered by you.

BTW - why hasn't ANYONE thought of bringing an application to the SCC  to judicially review the PM's actions and his use of Cabinet confidentiality in SNC? The Tories propose that, if the RCMP is stopped from completing an investigation into the government by the use of cabinet secrecy, it should be able to apply to the SCC to get access. Why can't it do that now? The UKSC prorogation case was filed by non-MP's as the Plaintiffs. The UKSC is far less powerful proportionally than the SCC. Why couldn't anyone do this then? But, more importantly why didn't the Opposition take the Liberals and Trudeau to court the moment that they stymied the Parliament's ability to investigate SNC? While I'm at it, why can't I do it? If anyone's reading this, I invite you to tell me why I or you for that matter would not have the standing to take the HMG and Trudeau to court over this and, if you agree with me that I can, help me set up a class action to do it!

(BTW 2 - If the Court and the Trudeau government's new laws say that pretty well anyone with a pulse can put in their five cents about pipelines in court,grf then why can't John Q. Public have a say in how his government and parliament are being used by the PM?)

The Funhouse Hall of Mirrors

In the weird topsy turvy back to front world we live in, I present to you the Funhouse Hall of Mirrors that is our politics and government today. 

In one mirror, a PM uses his age old power as chief executive to suspend the legislature. He is called an "elected dictator" by the court and implicitly a liar and ordered to cease and desist. The court does this while people call for the politician to be hung in the streets. He is excoriated for expelling MPs from his party who voted against him in Parliament. He is openly called a racist by MPs and the Speaker fails to censure them when all know the PM is about as racist as you or me. One of his opponents swears she will never honour the result of a national referendum and calls herself a "Liberal Democrat" while her colleagues cross benches refuse to hold an election on the most crucial issue of the day and their press hail them for "defending democracy". The Speaker who tears up many of those same age old rules is called a hero.

In another, A PM blatantly brazenly and openly covers up a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice, interfere with the courts and meddle with judicial and prosecutorial independence. He shuts down Parliament, the police, his Cabinet, the Ethics and Justice committees and expels his female native justice minister using extreme party discipline and...nothing happens let alone a court order or an independent investigation. Finally, he shows himself to be an Un-PC hypocrite on racism in the Blackface scandal and the polls hardly budge. The only leader in the election in the meantime that talks clearly about the issues is called a racist and marginalized.

In another, a President is found not guilty of foreign collusion or anything like obstruction after 4 years of investigation including a special counsel, the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department and his political opponent in the election at enormous cost and effort and he is still hounded by the Congress constantly (who already investigated it under his own party before) and now is about to be impeached for simply speaking with a foreign statesman about possibly restarting an investigation into his opponent's son. For trying for almost three years and counting to mount a coup against the President and undo the result of his perfectly fair and legitimate election, they are called "Democrats".

It is apparent that, unlike in the Hall of Mirrors, the image that you see in the mirror, whether long, tall, short, wide, fat or small, depends on who you are not the warp of the mirror's glass. If you are Democrat, Labour or Liberal and you look in the mirror, the image is pristine as presented by the courts, the media or the academia or the "glorious retired" or punditocracy. If you are Conservative or Republican, the image is distorted in the extreme, grotesque, bizarre and deplorable regardless of your merits. Worse, if you are PC, the mirror is clear. If not...