Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

[Amor de Cosmos]

“His dark hair is a colour found in nature,”

[Hot Pepsi]

“His dark hair is a colour found in nature,”

He's ok, I guess. It's like that shitty period in the late 90s and early 2000s when we still had to rely mostly on radio for music and most of it was awful sub-grunge numetal shit, but Hole put out a few songs that were pretty good that got on the radio. Trudeau is Hole.

If a future civilization tries to make a film or miniseries about this period in world history, it will be very hard to make it credible. The characters are all terrible. Unsympathetic stereotypes, for the most part.

[Amor de Cosmos]

That may be the first, and only time Boy Justin gets compared with Courtney Love

[Amor de Cosmos]

Oh Justin, you were only a pretty face after all.

Current G&M home page, note particularly the columnists headers. The Conservatives benefit from clumsy Liberal insider deal-making once again.

[WOM]

Ah, thank goodness. I've been planning to bump / start this conversation for about 5 weeks now. Total, avoidable self-inflicted wounds that will see him lose his majority or his job. It'll be an interesting year.

[Flynnie]

Insider deal-making in Québec at that.

[Amor de Cosmos]

The sensible thing would be for him to resign. There are some very good people in the cabinet who'd stand a chance of retrieving something out of the ruins, but doing the sensible thing seems to a lost cause anywhere these days. The Liberals will probably circle the wagons, grit their teeth and go into survival mode.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Insider deal-making in Québec at that.

Yeah. Who'd have thunk it?

[WOM]

The sensible thing would be for him to resign. There are some very good people in the cabinet who'd stand a chance of retrieving something out of the ruins, but doing the sensible thing seems to a lost cause anywhere these days. The Liberals will probably circle the wagons, grit their teeth and go into survival mode.

Ride the party straight off a cliff, as the G&M article says. Grits never do the right thing in this regard, otherwise Wynne would have resigned and let someone else lead them into the last provincial election.

[WOM]

This whole thing boils right down to one, easily-decided issue: character.

[Flynnie]

Yeah. Who'd have thunk it?

How the hell was it so clumsily handled? SNC-Lavalin wouldn't have done the deed if they didn't think they would get away with it, so there's clearly a road map to smoothing things over, as it were. Coming into this scandal as a relative noob, did Trudeau underestimate Wilson-Raybould taking her job seriously or are there other factors here?

[WOM]

Given the number of men who paid her a visit, I'd lean heavily toward "Come on sweetheart, we all know how politics really works. Let's trade a few horses...". It's sickening from our 'feminist PM'.

[ursus arctos]

The Quadriga story on that Page One is also intriguing.

[Amor de Cosmos]

How the hell was it so clumsily handled? SNC-Lavalin wouldn't have done the deed if they didn't think they would get away with it, so there's clearly a road map to smoothing things over, as it were. Coming into this scandal as a relative noob, did Trudeau underestimate Wilson-Raybould taking her job seriously or are there other factors here?

The former I think. His cabinet was selected based very much on diversity and new faces. They ticked all the right electoral boxes, the trouble is, because many of them are rookies, or close to it they didn't understand/accept how the Liberal "game" is played and has been for decades. I'm not even sure Trudeau understood it fully. Wilson-Raybould certainly didn't. She's the epitome of everything Trudeau's Liberal government was supposed to represent, young, female, indigenous, from the West, super-bright and, oops... somebody with a conscience. In a sense they've been hoisted by their own petard.

[ursus arctos]

Agreed.

Another interesting (to me) aspect of this is that it very much appears that an abject failure to enforce any kind of FCPA-like anti-corruption rules overseas was viewed by Canadian companies as a competitive advantage. There is no way that this was an isolated case.

[Amor de Cosmos]

The Quadriga story on that Page One is also intriguing.

Yeah. I admit I haven't been following it closely, mainly because I assume anyone involved with crypto-currency is either a fool or a crook

[WOM]

Quadringa is right up there on my watch list, along with the Dennis Oland murder re-trial and the pastor/wife drowning re-trial. Frankly, it's a wonder I get anything else done these days.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Another cabinet minister resigns, Treasury Board head Jane Phillpott is gone. You wonder how far this might escalate.

[WOM]

And now Butts is going to testify. This just ain't going away, no matter how much Justin talks about going to the moon.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Butts is Justin's BFF though, so he's probably going to save as much of his ass as he can.

[WOM]

Well, that's the plan. A nation turns a cynical eye to you...oo..oo..oo.

[Lang Spoon]

So will Ford minimus be the next Premier and feckin Jordan Peterson consigliere?

[Lang Spoon]

From afar it seems the Liberals can't help being inherently useless. Why haven't the NDP supplanted the party of Ignatieff yet in terms of centre left leaning voters?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

This whole thing boils right down to one, easily-decided issue: character.

Did I hear someone mention Doug Ford?

[WOM]

Did I hear someone mention Doug Ford?

You could have run a potted fern and won against Kathleen Wynne, she was so unpopular.