Change-Of-Pace Friday: A Teachable Moment

Given all of the strife and anguished suffering of today's world, it really is necessary for our health just to sit back and have an occasional good laugh. I hope the following proves therapeutic for you.

Be sure to watch till the end:

Where The Truth Lies

Yesterday, a friend forwarded to me a video that is shocking in content, showing a tank running over and crushing a car. There was no accompanying information, so I did a search and found out that it is authentic. Fortunately and incredibly, it appears that the driver of the vehicle survived, as the video indicates. The event took place in Kyiv.

My immediate conclusion upon seeing this was it was a Russian armoured vehicle. The truth, however, is somewhat cloudy, as revealed by Snopes.

Although some of the videos that spread on social media early in the invasion were not real, this one has been vetted as authentic based on multiple sources who witnessed the incident. We do not have the name of the victim, and therefore don’t know how badly that person was injured.

France24 analyzed the videos taken of the incident and concluded that the tank appeared to be Ukrainian, although and [sic] cause of the collision was unclear. Ukrainian government officials accused Russian saboteurs of taking Ukrainian military gear and posing as Ukrainians. French TV news station TF1 Info hypothesized that the driver was Ukrainian and that the collision was an accident caused by the fighting.

None of this, of course, minimizes the horrific invasion and war currently going on in Ukraine. It does, however, serve as a reminder that in the fog of war, facts and critical thinking are more important than ever. 

Leadership Under The Microscope

 

I need ammunition, not a ride - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

With those six words, the Ukrainian President has put leadership under the microscope. His is the kind of courageous example that most people would long for in their politicians, but have likely long ago dismissed as a fond notion best confined to fantasy.

Juxtapose someone of great moral courage with a cruel dictator heedless of human life; one will inspire, and one will repel. And in the process you might just stir the world to at least a semblance of unity.

While everyone's attention is rightly rivetted by the terrible tragedy underway in Ukraine, one can also be heartened by the collective action much of the world is taking against the monstrous and calloused choices being made by Vladimir Putin. While not perfect by any means, the sanctions are the expression of strong condemnation of the war crimes underway. 

All of which has led to me thinking about the potential of leadership to unite a country. I would say that, especially in the early days of the pandemic, Justin Trudeau provided such leadership, appearing daily outside his cottage for updates, quarantining when necessary, and letting his hair and beard grow somewhat unruly, something many of us could relate to in those times. By these measures, he conveyed a message of shared pain and sacrifice. While obviously of an entirely different magnitude than that shown by Zelensky, it was what we needed at the time.

Then I think about the man who "wants to be your next prime minister," Pierre Poilievre. As described in The Breach, he is an ideologue who wants to replace social programs with a “tiny survival stipend”. It is a small part of his model of leadership that will inspire the mean-spirited and repel the fair-minded.

Althia Raj offers some thoughts on the options open for the Conservative Party as they ponder who should next lead them. Will they continue down the road to Trumpism or attempt to appeal to a wider part of the electorate?

The only declared candidate, Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre, is a polarizing figure with a “take no prisoners” attitude. He recently called Europe’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shockingly “weak,” embraced the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” and called COVID-19 public health measures a purposeful attempt by governments “to try and take away our freedom and give themselves more power.”

In the past, Poilievre has attacked the media, made derogatory comments about Indigenous peoples, left the door open to a niqab ban in the public service, and broken the election law. Elected at age 25, the career MP is a forceful opposition critic who has railed against elites, placed the blame for rising inflation and house prices at the feet of the Liberals, and promised more energy projects. His campaign launch through a social media video on Feb. 5 garnered more than seven million views on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. At least 26 Conservative caucus members have endorsed him.

While the vote-getting allure of the demagogue is tempting to many, others aren't so sure, seriously considering other potential candidate like Jean Charest and Patrick Brown, both moderates and from the progressive wing of the party. 

None of these choices inspire in the way that Zelensky does, but Poilivre's no-holds-barred strategy, which includes courting supporters of The People's Party, does offer some increasingly clear choices: 

In choosing a leader, the Conservatives must ask themselves what their winning formula will be —do they want to take votes from Bernier’s far-right party or from Justin Trudeau’s Liberals?

Short, But Not So Sweet (For Some)

 As always, Mrs. Betty Bowers nails it, quite succinctly.

While The World Is Preoccupied

 

While the invasion of Ukraine is undoubtedly the world-shaking event that the media are reporting it as, it would be unwise as Canadians to feel blasé about our home-grown problems, problems made abundantly clear by the recent occupation of Ottawa by a domestic force known as the trucker convoy.

Peopled by idiots all too eager to subscribe to misinformation propagated both domestically and internationally, it was a worrying indictment of the the health of our own democracy. 

Writer Noelle Allen offers some examples and insights into this scourge.

There’s a tweet making the rounds right now about how if the Governor General receives 958,000 emails saying that the sender is casting a non-confidence vote against Justin Trudeau, she will remove him from office. Of course, it has been quickly debunked. 

 There appeared to have been an absurd belief at the occupation of Ottawa that police could not arrest you if you were singing “O Canada” and a much more dangerous belief that they could not arrest you if children were present. There has also been a lot of discussion about the participants’ First Amendment Rights at the various blockades. In the U.S., this is the protection of freedom of speech, the press and assembly. In Canada it doesn’t exist...

The sentiments behind these absurd contentions are worrying in that they betray a contempt for democracy:

It’s telling that the Ottawa anti-vax group started off stating in their “memorandum of understanding” posted on the Canada Unity website that they expected to “form a committee with the Senate and the Governor General to override all levels of Canadian government.” They wanted to wipe the slate clean of all elected politicians and install their own governing junta. The federal election we had less than six months ago simply wasn’t good enough for them, though instead of trying to pretend the election was stolen as Trump did in the U.S., they went straight to trying to overthrow the government.

Allen laments the fact that discussion and compromise are not in the makeup of these miscreants: 

The hard-right fringe keeps coming up against the uncomfortable truth that there are other people in the country and they get to vote, too. But instead of leaving their bubbles, asking what they need to do to meet the rest of Canada in the middle and doing the hard work of democracy, they’ve turned to looking for ways to make our elected officials vanish. They’re like peevish customers who don’t agree with the approach of the front counter staff and are constantly trying to find a way to get what they want by demanding to speak to the manager, only in this case, they seem to believe the manager is the Governor General of Canada. 

Rather than mock or ignore these people, Allen sees them as dangerous:

... the willingness to press for what they want at any cost, to call our elected politicians traitors and threaten them with violence, to hold a city hostage, to simply expect to override the entire system of democracy to get what they want, makes this group dangerous. That way leads to a dictatorship. We need to prosecute those who participated in the illegal blockades fully and make it clear the cost of trying to break our democracy is high. Too high for them to try this again.

And on that last note, allow me to express my satisfaction that, like Tamara Lich, Pat King has been denied bail, the JP ruling against it due to the seriousness of the charges that will likely entail imprisonment. 

It would seem that Noelle Allen's hopes are being realized.

For further discussion on this topic, please click here.

 

What Is A Conscientious Voter To Do?

I think we all realize that democracy in many parts of the world, including our own, is in a state of malaise. The threats we face are not simply the obvious ones like cyberattacks, shadowy sources of funding for insidious trucker convoys and rampant disinformation.

Many of our problems are from within, with leaders who stand for little but a deep avidity for winning elections. That certainly seems to be the case in Ontario today.

There is the current premier, Doug Ford, in full campaign mode as he promises to surrender over $1 billion in rebates for licence sticker renewal fees going back to 2020; henceforth, there will no longer be fees, making the billion-dollar revenue loss permanent.. As well, the ending of two toll roads will leave an additional deep gap in provincial coffers, because, according to Doug, it's our money, not the government's.

Ford is counting on people selling their votes to him on the basis of slim individual savings at a future cost of slashed programs that all Ontario has access to. And in that, he may not be wrong, as he is not the only cheerleader for this 'relief.'

Predictably, but odiously, Ontario NDP has jumped on the bandwagon, something leader Andrea Horwath seems to have a particular knack for. (One may recall that in a previous election foray, all she could talk about was helping small businesses, with nary a word about working folk.)

Marin Regg Cohn writes:

If political leftists can’t beat the right-wing premier at his own game, they might as well join him in cutting government revenues. Which is why the loudest victory lap, after Ford’s Tories rescinded tolls in Durham, came from NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

 “Today is a victory,” Horwath exulted after Ford’s announcement, congratulating her Oshawa MPP Jennifer French — a New Democrat facing a tough re-election battle against the Tories — and the local activists she teamed up with to “free the 412 and 418” highways. Never mind that Bob Rae’s NDP government pioneered toll roads with Highway 407 in the 1990s, today’s New Democrats are firmly opposed.

Next, Horwath announced she was going along with Ford’s campaign-style announcement Tuesday to remove the annual license plate renewal fee. It wasn’t an NDP priority, she pointed out — small beer, perhaps — yet Horwath pointedly refused to say how she would make up the money to pay for her party’s other priorities.

It seems that whenever Horwath's party, instead of displaying principle and integrity, pursues anything that might get them into office while still insisting they are being steadfast.

“When it comes to the amount of money that’s being refunded, all of those pieces, I’m not particularly opposed to it,” Horwath told reporters.

Yet in the same breath, she restated NDP priorities to spend more on education, housing, health care, long-term care and child care. Where would that money come from?

Apparently, she is making some of the same assumptions about the mental acuity and character of the electorate that Doug Ford is making.

What is a conscientious voter to do? 

 

Truly Vile, Truly Racist

For those who have the delusion the trucker convoy that held Ottawa hostage for three weeks was but a benign display of patriotic fervour, please explain to me how a threatening, racist punk like Pat King became one of its leaders.

Warning: the following is quite vile, but it exposes the ugliness of King very effectively:

P.S.  Fellow Albertan Kerry Komix, who offered to put up 50K at his bail hearing today, is sure that these videos have been altered. Having met the miscreant four weeks ago, she had this to say:

"I do know that's not the person that I know," Komix said of the videos. "I know he loves everyone and does not discriminate, that's the person I know."