The News Rundown

Trudeau uses trucker protests as political weapon

For more than a week now there has been talk of the so-called Freedom Convoy moving across the country to Ottawa.
The convoy is a group of trucks aiming to send a message to Ottawa about the vaccine mandates initially but as with most causes the message changes and gets hijacked.
The number of trucks and individuals involved in the convoy is also of course suspicious as people have low balled it in the low hundreds all the way into the thousands to the point where some have said tens of thousands of people are involved.
The initial push and motivational factor behind the convoy was the trucker vaccine mandate which we talked about a couple episodes ago.
On Western Context 252 it was estimated that anywhere between 10 and 30% of the cross-border trucking workforce could be sidelined with this mandate representing up to 23,000 truck drivers.
That provided the initial call for people to organize.
Since then the convoy movement has seen its fair share of people examining it from truckers, the media, independent media, and ordinary Canadians.
8 days ago the option existed for any of the political parties in Canada to harness the people behind the convoy but no one acted.
And as such, the movement has been influenced by forces on the far right and the message has changed.
The House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms, Patrick McDonell warned MPs that people associated with the convoy were looking for home addresses of MPs that live in the Ottawa area.
All MPs were also warned that the same people associated with the convoy were looking for the personal information of all MPs to find and publish that information online with the hope that it could be used for nefarious purposes. This is called doxxing and is 100% unacceptable in any circumstance as is protesting at any MP’s home.
Conservative Finance critic Pierre Poilievre was asked by the media about the convoy and reports of extremists groups and individuals joining the convoy he said, “What I think is interesting, is that when there’s a left wing protest on parliament hill we don’t see the liberal media going through every single name of the people who attend that they can disparage the whole group with… whenever you have 5 or 10,000 people part of any group you’re bound to have a number who have or say unacceptable things. They should be individually responsible for the things that they do. That doesn’t mean that we disparage the thousands of hard working, law abiding, and peaceful truckers who quite frankly have kept all of you alive for the last 2 years.”
On Thursday the other day, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole spoke regarding the trucker convoy in a video posted to Twitter.
The video touches on the vaccine mandate, supply chain issues, and just how important truckers have become during the pandemic.
The video rightly points out that when the pandemic began, it was only the truckers allowed to cross the Canada/US border. There was no vaccine almost 2 years ago when the pandemic began. There was far less information about what we were dealing with. We made it work then, it can be made to work now.
For O’Toole himself he plans to meet with the truckers but not the organizers of the convoy, the idea behind this ensures that the root of the problem is addressed and not an agenda pushed by a group that has been trying to hijack this movement.
And that’s what it is, no matter how big or small, a movement.
A movement that should have easily been captured by any of the opposition parties but they waited too long and it was hijacked.
Sensing the opportunity though, Justin Trudeau has used the truckers to his advantage again as he did during the election putting one group of Canadians against another.
Earlier this past week he said, “Almost 90% of truckers in Canada are vaccinated. I regret that the Conservative party and Conservative politicians are in the process of stoking Canadians’ fears about the supply chain. The reality is that vaccination is how we’ll get through this.”
This of course does ignore the issue of cross border truckers but at the end of the day, that 90% pits anyone vaccinated against that remaining 10%.
In other words, as written in the Toronto Sun by Brian Lilley, “be angry at the people who are keeping us locked down.”
At the end of the day it comes down to numbers.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance has stated that about 85% of its drivers are vaccinated, while around 15% of the 120,000 Canadian drivers who cross the border regularly are not.
That means roughly 18,000 drivers can’t deliver or pick up loads in the United States.
Over time this will be felt in the supplies delivered to grocery stores and prices will go up exactly as we said back on episode 252.
There have been efforts made by the media to move along from this issue or say that it’s more complicated than just truckers.
And yes, everything is more complicated than just a simple question of being short truckers but the reality has been that most products today are in short supply but that’s no reason to ignore what 18,000 fewer drivers means.
This story regarding truckers had the potential to be huge last week and quite frankly we were baffled as to why it was not and why no political party seized on it.
The opposition was 8 days late and the messaging to this point has been poor and as a result the message has been hijacked to the point the bulk of online conversation is disparaging the truckers just as Justin Trudeau and the media seem to want. For that we all suffer.
Before we move on, it’s worth noting that even Jason Kenney has noted in his own view that “this is turning into a crisis” and he’s been talking with US governors who share this view to write a joint letter to President Biden and Justin Trudeau on this matter.
Supplementals:

It was a quiet news week in BC this week, but one startling news story follows the trend of many from the past year or so, that being a survey of another former residential school revealing 93 potential burial sites near Williams Lake.
Archaeologist Whitney Spearing, head of the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School investigative team, said at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon that a number of scientific techniques were used to scour a 14-hectare area. They included ground-penetrating radar, the technology underpinning the discovery of about 200 unmarked graves near Kamloops last spring that spurred Williams Lake to undertake its own work. The St. Joseph's Mission Residential School was in operation between 1891-1981.
Ms. Spearing’s team interviewed survivors of the school from eight different First Nations and analyzed archival records and photographs to narrow down the search area. They also used a laser-radar instrument known as LiDAR, mounted on a small airplane, and another on the ground to map where old pipes and remnants of demolished buildings lay. This is why these are only considered "potential" burial sites, as Spearing says: “excavation is the only technology that will provide answers as to whether human remains are present.”
50 of the 93 sites were found outside of the cemetery adjacent to the former residential school. The cemetery grounds cover a tiny portion of the area that was searched, with most of the potential graves found in other parts of the site.
Williams Lake First Nations Chief Willie Sellars said many of the children who attended the school are unaccounted for. He also noted survivors’ accounts of the long history of sexual and physical abuse at the facility. There were accounts of children who were tied to boards and lashed, frequent disappearances, murders, systematic torture, rape and starvation of children, according to Sellars.
Several former teachers were jailed in the 1980s and 1990s for sex crimes involving dozens of their students, and Sellars notes disturbing stories from survivors who have told of how “the unwanted babies of certain priests at St. Joseph’s were burned in the incinerator.”
Sellars said that there were reports of children disappearing from the school or dying on its grounds while it was still in operation, but those stories were "intentionally obscured" through destruction of records and cover-ups by governments, church authorities and police. Chief Sellars sums it up by saying: "This journey has led our investigation team into the darkest recesses of human behaviour."
Former Senator Murray Sinclair, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, acknowledged these remarks, and said last summer that some survivors told of young girls who gave birth to babies fathered by priests, and the infants were “taken away from them and deliberately killed.”
Preventable deaths at the residential school were often not investigated by the RCMP or the Coroner's Service. Chief Sellars said official records were uncovered that indicated some students ran away and one 8-year-old boy died in the wilderness of exposure. He also noted that letters from parents to the school show that a group of nine students attempted to kill themselves by ingesting poisoned hemlock.
After the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc discovery of the remains of more than 200 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, the B.C. government announced grants of up to $475,000 each for 21 First Nations to help with searches for human remains at former residential schools or government hospitals that were created to treat First Nations people.
At the Tuesday news conference, Chief Sellars acknowledged the support of the provincial and federal governments, and thanked the ministers of Indigenous relations and reconciliation for attending. But he said more funding is needed to continue this investigation, as the discussion continues on whether to excavate or not, and as outreach continues with survivors and the families of former students.
As many First Nations continue to grapple with the horrific discoveries as well as the gruesome tales from former students and family members, the rest of Canada and indeed the world watches on in our response to these tragedies. Unfortunately, the residential school system tragedies remain a part of our history, and is a topic that many Canadians were unaware of before this past year. The only way forward is to do better, and to ensure that these events are not forgotten or repeated.
Supplementals:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/williams-lake-st-josephs-residential-school-1.6326467

Conservative post-election report says O'Toole was 'over-managed' during the campaign

The Conservative review of the 2021 election was tabled on Thursday.
The report was compiled by former Alberta MP James Cumming and reached the conclusion that Erin O’Toole didn’t connect well with voters because he “wasn’t himself” at key points in the race.
The review also noted that the Conservatives erased the Liberal’s perceived lead in the polls (were they ever actually leading though?) and at one point held the lead themselves.
The report also called for O’Toole to do more physical campaigning and less virtual campaigning with his telephone town halls that drew thousands of listeners.
The idea behind the loss in momentum as highlighted in the report is that the broadcast studio made his only actions with voters those in telephone town halls and according to the report, O’Toole was also different in studio than out of studio.
For Conservatives at the riding level in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the question of the perceived flip flop on the assault weapons ban (horrible name) and conscience rights issues were key reasons for a drop in support in rural Canada according to the media.
But remember, the Conservatives won 44/48 seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan and still won the popular vote despite losing the election due to the west.
The report also talks about the issue of making inroads in ethnic communities in Toronto and Vancouver, particularly with supporters that were lost in the 2015 election.
The report paints a picture of the so-called niqab ban and barbaric cultural practices hotline of 2015 still playing an issue today.
The party and anyone who doesn’t want to see Justin Trudeau in power has to come to a realization that this report is wrong.
The only alternative to Justin Trudeau, unless Jagmeet Singh can turn TikTok followers and likes into voters, is the Conservatives.
Western Context focuses primarily on the media interactions that take place when political news breaks.
We’ve covered a handful of elections now and with our own data analytics have come to a different conclusion in the months since the election loss.
And we saw the cause of that loss on display again this week with the truckers story.
The Conservatives can not control the media narrative. Most MPs and the leader, speak in political talking points and not language that resonates with ordinary voters.
The party was 8 days late on saying anything about the truckers. What political leader wouldn’t want to have thousands of new supporters at their back?
Press conferences are free coverage and in an election, free advertisements. Media will cover them back to back. Imagine a schedule where Erin O’Toole starts the day in Ottawa with a press conference at the press theatre before moving on to the province of the day.
Pair those with a change in language and tone and that fixes one side of the problem.
Secondly, the party needs to better identify its supporters. The Liberal voting database is said to do this well and the Conservative one does not.
Take a page out of the Trump playbook: start holding small events in the lead up to the next election, make them free to attend, and all that’s required is an attendee give their cell phone number to receive an entry pass which in turn adds them to a supporter list and slowly ramp up as the election comes closer.
Or use the free membership approach outlined in the report and create a new class of member based off of interest online until we get back to in-person events and then engage these people and find out if they’re actually supporters and what could move them.
Finally, stop relying on the traditional path of the west + greater Vancouver + area around Toronto to win.
Revive the Mulroney coalition of the west, rural Ontario, Quebec nationalists, and Atlantic Canada. Make Quebec as important as Alberta for the Conservatives, that’s what Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair did in 2011 and the NDP formed opposition from almost nothing.
It is eloquently summed up as: don’t assume you win the same way you did over the last 30 years to win the next one. Break things and be innovative.
That’s our perspective and it’s important to take note of this alternate view since the report commissioned by the party largely mirrors what those in the media have said since September and that should concern Conservative members the most, that their report mirrors what the mainstream media has said.
No one ever made any headway being afraid of the wind.

Firing Line

Trudeau’s housing promises still not materializing

Just more broken promises. That's what's being described of Justin Trudeau's approach to the housing crisis, which has seen prices go up by 85% since he was elected in 2015. Yes, that's right, in just 6 and a half years, a house has almost doubled in price.
It’s easy to lose track of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s broken promises on the housing crisis, but it’s imperative to monitor how little he has done to rein in prices that have gone completely out of control under his watch, despite saying all the right things and promising to follow through on them.
For one, we can look at his approach to foreign buyers, who most analysts agree have been one of the significant factors jacking up prices. During the fall 2019 election campaign, Trudeau strategically came to B.C., where the unaffordability crisis had already been brewing for years, to announce a tax on homes owned by foreign buyers.
Yet, when the Liberals won a minority government in October of that year, Trudeau managed to make the foreign-owners tax promise disappear from the public’s mind — despite the Conservatives and the NDP making it clear they would support it.
Two years later, in the 2021 fall election campaign, Trudeau again trotted out the same commitment, vowing a one-per-cent tax on under-utilized homes owned by non-resident, non-Canadians.
And when the Conservatives’ Erin O’Toole upped the housing-crisis ante by promising to ban foreign buyers for two years, Trudeau blatantly copied him. He also claimed he would put a tax on property flipping, spend billions on housing supply, and restrict exploitive real-estate agents.
The media, as a result, began talking about Trudeau’s “aggressive” new approach to the housing crisis. But what, actually, has happened? There are, for instance, no signs his dramatic-sounding two-year ban on foreign buyers is about to become legislation any time soon. And even Trudeau’s promise from 2019, a one-per-cent tax on foreign-owned vacant homes, is far from reality.
Brad Vis, MP for Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, and recent housing shadow minister for the Conservatives, introduced an opposition-day motion in the House last June to freeze housing purchases by non-resident foreign buyers. It was passed with the support of Conservative, NDP and Bloc MPs, but opposed by Liberals.
Still, the public might logically think that Trudeau’s meek campaign promise to tax foreign nationals’ under-utilized homes would be running by the beginning of this year, since that’s when it was supposed to go into effect. But, with the Liberals largely avoiding parliament last year, it took until mid-December to even become a legislative proposal.
Vis said that the Liberals have “only tabled the (tax) legislation in an omnibus bill that hasn’t been debated in parliament. So we could have months of debate and committee study and then have to go through the Senate as well. We’re months away from any kind of foreign-buyers tax.”
Even this bill reveals significant loopholes. Were it to go ahead, the party wants to exempt non-Canadians who buy what it calls “recreational properties,” including one a family member lives in for just four weeks a year. Whatever comes of the bill, dubbed C8, it is also a far cry from a two-year ban on all foreign buyers. And it doesn’t come close to Singapore’s recent decision to slap a 30-per-cent surtax on all foreign purchases , as well as a five-per-cent tax on first purchases by permanent residents.
In addition to tackling the ways housing supply, low interest rates and immigration levels impact housing costs, Vis said it is important to make sure it’s “not easier for foreign buyers, who often possess a taxation advantage over Canadians, to use that advantage to outbid Canadians in the housing market.”
Even the Liberals’ former secretary of housing, Adam Vaughan, admitted as much last year when he said Canada has become “a very safe market for foreign investment … but it’s not a great market for Canadians looking for choices around housing.”
Citing the work of former SFU prof. Josh Gordon , Vis recognizes many immigrants, especially professionals, who buy houses in Canada are doing so with equity from their homelands, which are often taxed at much lower rates than Canadians incomes. Vis says: “I don’t blame them for that, but for Canadian citizens, it’s another stoke in the fire” of unaffordability.
Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen was asked this week about the party’s vows, and his media official responded with what has to be called more verbiage, saying the minister recognizes “the dream of home ownership has become out of reach for far too many Canadians.” Hussen was doing all he could to “consult” and “work with every tool” to bring about affordability. No legislative deadlines were offered.
Nevertheless, despite what often seems a Liberal haze of smoke and mirrors, the party keeps winning minority governments by snagging one-third of the popular vote, in part on the strength of Trudeau’s so-far hollow housing promises, as well as because of the media covering his lofty promises but not following up when he did literally nothing about implementing them. That led to Trudeau's September 2021 election machine grabbing all but a handful of the 79 ridings in Greater Toronto and Metro Vancouver, where housing costs have long been the worst, not only in Canada, but in much of the world. Go figure.
Supplementals:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-baby-boomers-are-breaking-the-real-estate-market-in-canada

Word of the Week

Disparage - regard or represent as being of little worth

Quote of the Week

"This journey has led our investigation team into the darkest recesses of human behaviour." - Williams Lake First Nations Chief Willie Sellars on the search for residential school remains

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Show Data

Episode Title: Dark Discoveries

Teaser: The Freedom convoy arrives in Ottawa, remains are found at another BC residential school, and the Conservatives election post mortem has been released. Also, we detail Trudeau’s broken promises on the housing crisis.

Recorded Date: January 28, 2022

Release Date: January 30, 2022

Duration: 52:36

Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX