I remember 2015. I had helped one of my friends who was a candidate in that election with door-knocking. I didn't identify with the party, but my friend is a really good person and I was proud to support them. It was a pretty exciting time, and that photo represented a high-water mark for Canada in a lot of really positive ways. My friend's face is there.
But do take a moment to look at all of those faces. How many of those rather exceptional people were simply used up, tossed aside, and otherwise ruined? For what purpose or for who's ambition? It's pretty shameful, actually, what we've become over the past 8 years. The idea of the "Cabinet" just doesn't exist in the same way that it ought to and this Summer 2023 shuffle is not really going to be of much import. Rather sad, really. 🇨🇦😢
Indeed, we know where you were going, but you didn’t really get there. Rather, you drove slowly past, glancing out the side window to see if there was anything of note.
But there isn’t, and that’s the point. The Conservative Party of today is very different from what Harper (to borrow from John Baird, probably the [luckiest] politician of his generation) inherited. He walked into the election with Reform remnants satisfactorily cowed, the important remnants of the progressives satisfactorily bought-off, and with a handful of bloodied enforcers from the Ontario Conservative machine to do the heavy lifting. The broken, rudderless Liberals, with a charmless and uninspiring regicidal leader didn’t have a chance.
The Skippy Party (again, to borrow from Mr. Baird) has no such luck. He appears to have surrounded himself with those who cannot upstage him. And he is very clearly quite good at performing, but what’s less clear is if there is anything more substantive. Is he a leader?... does he have credible ideas?... and does he have the expertise and stamina to execute them?
Many have asked this question in a variety of publications, and nothing so far suggests that he does. The sad indictment of Boris Johnson in the Guardian is apropos : he suffers from "the emptiness of real ambition: the ambition to do anything useful with office once it is attained". Not that I’m equating them. Bojo is a man of real accomplishment. He bent a global superpower to his will, and singlehandedly did more damage to it than any man alive. It’s inconceivable that Skippy could be so effective.
But if he is an empty vessel, then what of his vassals? I can’t visualize any of them, let alone name them, and I’m a junkie for this stuff. These are not seasoned public servants, captains of industry or recognized academics, just elected Conservatives, largely newbies with opinions.
Yes, Skippy can lose the spectacles, put on a tight white t-shirt to show off his rather impressive torso, but that’s not going to move the Liberals and Dippers he desperately needs to win. This is a competition of skullduggery and ideas. He’s got the former down pat, but is losing on the latter.
Lots of food for thought. It was bench strength that got my attention in 2015. Now not so much, especially since this avowed feminist kicked his two best ministers to the curb because he couldn’t swallow his pride and admit he was wrong.
At the top of this article, Mr. Wells makes reference to The Star’s Tonda MacCharles angle on an upcoming Cabinet shuffle. Much of the insider information places heavy emphasis on messaging and communication issues that need better execution. If only good communicators were rearranged into critical portfolios that are floundering the public would GET IT.
This is quite a follow up to Mr. Wells fine 4 part essays about modern communication and the way it consumes this Liberal Government. At this point, he certainly has license to say “I told you so”.
Making the public believe that good things are happening is far more important than fixing the multitude of problems that the Liberals would sooner sweep under a rug. Smoke and mirrors deliverology.
I agree with Mr. Wells observations about bench strength in the CPC caucus. This is hard to gauge for many reasons, including endless leadership campaigns that detract from team building and a pandemic that sucked the oxygen out of the news cycle for any political party in Canada that wasn’t in power. But Canadians can also see that the bar has been set pretty low for competence in Cabinet, and surely the CPC can equal the current bunch or better it.
This model for journalism is good in that I can read your generally good work. However, I can't afford to follow 20 journalists, in Ottawa, Vancouver, Washington, Paris, London etc... using this model... We need a "pay per click" model, where I top up my journo bank account, and each time I click on one of your pieces, or one from Andrew Coyne, or whoever, a bit of $$ goes to your journo account. I would retain access to the best journos, and be free to pay for those articles I would be most interested in.
The notion that "cannabis is legal" is a story three words long is the greatest example I've ever heard in my life that "good news is not news". For me, it was the end of 40 years of fear. I could go on for 1000 words about how that fear affected my life, and how the end of it changed my life.
It was also the vindication of all the thousands of times activists had said that it was far less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, the end of 40 years of suppression of scientific research that is now allowing cannabinoids to be investigated as medicine. Big story for some hard-working research physicians.
It was the start of billions of dollars in economic activity that created tens of thousands of legal jobs and tax revenues. But these are treated as *their* stories, the stories of the entrepreneurs.
"$10 Day Care", also just three words, and the last interest journalism took in the subject. "CERB came quickly" and "Singh Doubled It", also just three words each, but ENORMOUSLY consequential to the poor beneficiaries, and their landlords.
No wonder "progress" (as progressives define it) is hard to get elected on. The moment you make progress, the subject is dropped as uninteresting.
Paul writes: "Canadians don’t generally put much stock in the complexion of a government’s face. They don’t normally know who’s in the cabinet."
Maybe now, maybe because so much time and effort goes into crafting messages that ministers all come out looking the same. Any good lines are reserved for the Boss.
But outstanding PMs past very much are remembered for the strong colleagues they were able to assemble.. Outstanding cabinet ministers tended to be figures of regional heft, individuals who could speak for their region . . . and knew how to play a role in the national conversation.
This was very much the case in the era of Trudeau the First. Don Jamieson (Transport) and Allan MacEachen (Regional Development) were strong voices for the Atlantic provinces. Such ministers as John Munro (Hamilton), James Richardson (Winnipeg), Jack Davis (Vancouver) had independent power bases in their home cities. Most notable back then, of course, were the Quebec colleagues who came to Ottawa with Trudeau. Jean Marchand, the best known, was already well-established as a labour leader.
A dozen years on, by the end of the '70s, Trudeau was out of magic dust and Joe Clark was prime minister. As a number of commentators have begun lately to recall, the Liberals regained power in 1980 with a campaign that deliberately "low-bridged" the leader. Their ad pitches profiled prominent regional recruits like Lloyd Axworthy (Manitoba) or Gerald Regan (Nova Scotia) and Trudeau himself undertook to attract as little attention as possible in the nightly newscasts.
Trudeau the Second is about as unpopular now as his dad back then but it is almost impossible to imagine the Liberals adopting a similar strategy this time round. Are there more than one or two cabinet ministers who stand outside the Trudeau penumbra today? Do any of them dare to bring an independent voice to the cabinet table. Certainly, with the death last year of Jim Carr in Winnipeg, it is difficult to think of anyone west of Thunder Bay with the standing required to provide effective regional representation.
And that's a pity. As one of the most successful prime ministers of the past generation likes reminds us, in Canada, national unity is always issue #1.
Like every cabinet, Trudeau's present executive council is a mixed bag of talent/no-talent individuals in it for the right/wrong reasons who know what they're doing/don't have a clue. These hodgepodges are often the result of imperatives beyond a prime minister's control: geography, language, demography, who got elected/who didn't, rewards required for loyal service/fundraising and so on. Is it just me, however, or did other prime ministers do a better job of getting the most out of all the elements they had to work with? You can have all the runway you need, but if you don't know how to fly the plane.... If I'm Poilievre or Singh the next time around, I'd be harping about a serious competence gap in some corners and the lingering feeling that no one higher up really cares about that little problem.
I was invited to renew my subscription. I am happy to do so. I hope that the process of renewing my subscription is an effortless exercise of clicking a box that pops up automatically via email.
"Selon l’Elysée, le couple exécutif a procédé à une « évaluation » des ministres selon deux critères : la capacité à mettre en œuvre des réformes et celle de les incarner pour les faire connaître aux Français. « On ne change pas la ligne politique, on mise sur des personnalités », appuie un conseiller du Palais." Le Monde, vendredi 21.7.2023, au sujet du remaniement ministériel d'Emmanuel.
I remember 2015. I had helped one of my friends who was a candidate in that election with door-knocking. I didn't identify with the party, but my friend is a really good person and I was proud to support them. It was a pretty exciting time, and that photo represented a high-water mark for Canada in a lot of really positive ways. My friend's face is there.
But do take a moment to look at all of those faces. How many of those rather exceptional people were simply used up, tossed aside, and otherwise ruined? For what purpose or for who's ambition? It's pretty shameful, actually, what we've become over the past 8 years. The idea of the "Cabinet" just doesn't exist in the same way that it ought to and this Summer 2023 shuffle is not really going to be of much import. Rather sad, really. 🇨🇦😢
Indeed, we know where you were going, but you didn’t really get there. Rather, you drove slowly past, glancing out the side window to see if there was anything of note.
But there isn’t, and that’s the point. The Conservative Party of today is very different from what Harper (to borrow from John Baird, probably the [luckiest] politician of his generation) inherited. He walked into the election with Reform remnants satisfactorily cowed, the important remnants of the progressives satisfactorily bought-off, and with a handful of bloodied enforcers from the Ontario Conservative machine to do the heavy lifting. The broken, rudderless Liberals, with a charmless and uninspiring regicidal leader didn’t have a chance.
The Skippy Party (again, to borrow from Mr. Baird) has no such luck. He appears to have surrounded himself with those who cannot upstage him. And he is very clearly quite good at performing, but what’s less clear is if there is anything more substantive. Is he a leader?... does he have credible ideas?... and does he have the expertise and stamina to execute them?
Many have asked this question in a variety of publications, and nothing so far suggests that he does. The sad indictment of Boris Johnson in the Guardian is apropos : he suffers from "the emptiness of real ambition: the ambition to do anything useful with office once it is attained". Not that I’m equating them. Bojo is a man of real accomplishment. He bent a global superpower to his will, and singlehandedly did more damage to it than any man alive. It’s inconceivable that Skippy could be so effective.
But if he is an empty vessel, then what of his vassals? I can’t visualize any of them, let alone name them, and I’m a junkie for this stuff. These are not seasoned public servants, captains of industry or recognized academics, just elected Conservatives, largely newbies with opinions.
Yes, Skippy can lose the spectacles, put on a tight white t-shirt to show off his rather impressive torso, but that’s not going to move the Liberals and Dippers he desperately needs to win. This is a competition of skullduggery and ideas. He’s got the former down pat, but is losing on the latter.
Empty vessel? Seems to me I heard that term written about a certain PM.
There are so few truly unbiased journalists left in this country. Thanks for being one of them.
Lots of food for thought. It was bench strength that got my attention in 2015. Now not so much, especially since this avowed feminist kicked his two best ministers to the curb because he couldn’t swallow his pride and admit he was wrong.
At the top of this article, Mr. Wells makes reference to The Star’s Tonda MacCharles angle on an upcoming Cabinet shuffle. Much of the insider information places heavy emphasis on messaging and communication issues that need better execution. If only good communicators were rearranged into critical portfolios that are floundering the public would GET IT.
This is quite a follow up to Mr. Wells fine 4 part essays about modern communication and the way it consumes this Liberal Government. At this point, he certainly has license to say “I told you so”.
Making the public believe that good things are happening is far more important than fixing the multitude of problems that the Liberals would sooner sweep under a rug. Smoke and mirrors deliverology.
I agree with Mr. Wells observations about bench strength in the CPC caucus. This is hard to gauge for many reasons, including endless leadership campaigns that detract from team building and a pandemic that sucked the oxygen out of the news cycle for any political party in Canada that wasn’t in power. But Canadians can also see that the bar has been set pretty low for competence in Cabinet, and surely the CPC can equal the current bunch or better it.
This model for journalism is good in that I can read your generally good work. However, I can't afford to follow 20 journalists, in Ottawa, Vancouver, Washington, Paris, London etc... using this model... We need a "pay per click" model, where I top up my journo bank account, and each time I click on one of your pieces, or one from Andrew Coyne, or whoever, a bit of $$ goes to your journo account. I would retain access to the best journos, and be free to pay for those articles I would be most interested in.
The notion that "cannabis is legal" is a story three words long is the greatest example I've ever heard in my life that "good news is not news". For me, it was the end of 40 years of fear. I could go on for 1000 words about how that fear affected my life, and how the end of it changed my life.
It was also the vindication of all the thousands of times activists had said that it was far less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, the end of 40 years of suppression of scientific research that is now allowing cannabinoids to be investigated as medicine. Big story for some hard-working research physicians.
It was the start of billions of dollars in economic activity that created tens of thousands of legal jobs and tax revenues. But these are treated as *their* stories, the stories of the entrepreneurs.
"$10 Day Care", also just three words, and the last interest journalism took in the subject. "CERB came quickly" and "Singh Doubled It", also just three words each, but ENORMOUSLY consequential to the poor beneficiaries, and their landlords.
No wonder "progress" (as progressives define it) is hard to get elected on. The moment you make progress, the subject is dropped as uninteresting.
Paul writes: "Canadians don’t generally put much stock in the complexion of a government’s face. They don’t normally know who’s in the cabinet."
Maybe now, maybe because so much time and effort goes into crafting messages that ministers all come out looking the same. Any good lines are reserved for the Boss.
But outstanding PMs past very much are remembered for the strong colleagues they were able to assemble.. Outstanding cabinet ministers tended to be figures of regional heft, individuals who could speak for their region . . . and knew how to play a role in the national conversation.
This was very much the case in the era of Trudeau the First. Don Jamieson (Transport) and Allan MacEachen (Regional Development) were strong voices for the Atlantic provinces. Such ministers as John Munro (Hamilton), James Richardson (Winnipeg), Jack Davis (Vancouver) had independent power bases in their home cities. Most notable back then, of course, were the Quebec colleagues who came to Ottawa with Trudeau. Jean Marchand, the best known, was already well-established as a labour leader.
A dozen years on, by the end of the '70s, Trudeau was out of magic dust and Joe Clark was prime minister. As a number of commentators have begun lately to recall, the Liberals regained power in 1980 with a campaign that deliberately "low-bridged" the leader. Their ad pitches profiled prominent regional recruits like Lloyd Axworthy (Manitoba) or Gerald Regan (Nova Scotia) and Trudeau himself undertook to attract as little attention as possible in the nightly newscasts.
Trudeau the Second is about as unpopular now as his dad back then but it is almost impossible to imagine the Liberals adopting a similar strategy this time round. Are there more than one or two cabinet ministers who stand outside the Trudeau penumbra today? Do any of them dare to bring an independent voice to the cabinet table. Certainly, with the death last year of Jim Carr in Winnipeg, it is difficult to think of anyone west of Thunder Bay with the standing required to provide effective regional representation.
And that's a pity. As one of the most successful prime ministers of the past generation likes reminds us, in Canada, national unity is always issue #1.
Ian Porter
Like every cabinet, Trudeau's present executive council is a mixed bag of talent/no-talent individuals in it for the right/wrong reasons who know what they're doing/don't have a clue. These hodgepodges are often the result of imperatives beyond a prime minister's control: geography, language, demography, who got elected/who didn't, rewards required for loyal service/fundraising and so on. Is it just me, however, or did other prime ministers do a better job of getting the most out of all the elements they had to work with? You can have all the runway you need, but if you don't know how to fly the plane.... If I'm Poilievre or Singh the next time around, I'd be harping about a serious competence gap in some corners and the lingering feeling that no one higher up really cares about that little problem.
Merci Paul. Un propos intéressant et sans complaisance.
I was invited to renew my subscription. I am happy to do so. I hope that the process of renewing my subscription is an effortless exercise of clicking a box that pops up automatically via email.
"Selon l’Elysée, le couple exécutif a procédé à une « évaluation » des ministres selon deux critères : la capacité à mettre en œuvre des réformes et celle de les incarner pour les faire connaître aux Français. « On ne change pas la ligne politique, on mise sur des personnalités », appuie un conseiller du Palais." Le Monde, vendredi 21.7.2023, au sujet du remaniement ministériel d'Emmanuel.
Minister Has-Been, lol
I was just sruck by the feeling of the present gov being OLD....they haven't been in all that long but it sure feels like it...
....or is it the absence of perkiness...
...and no, the Cons have no obvious replacements except Cooper for Minister Wormtoungue .