Friday, May 10, 2019

The Day The Cons May Have Lost the Election

I can't imagine what the mood at Con headquarters must have been like today.

Or how Andrew Scheer and his ex-Rebel campaign manager Hamish Marshall must be feeling after their ghastly gang was hit by two massive blows, that just might cost the Cons the election.

First the Admiral Norman Affair, that they had been hoping would be another fake scandal they could use to destroy Justin Trudeau, went down like a lead balloon. Or the Titanic.

And made the Cons rather than the Liberals look bad.

When it was revealed that those three Harper Con ministers had been sitting on information, that had they delivered to the RCMP, could have ended Norman's prosecution long ago.

But they didn't, so Scheer and his ghastly gang were able to smear Justin Trudeau. 


Only to be left like their stooges in the Con media looking like idiots.

Even as a second devastating blow hit the Cons with the force of a nuclear bomb. 

Canada's labour market delivered a surprise Friday with its biggest one-month employment surge since 1976, when the government started collecting comparable data. 

The country added 106,500 net jobs in April, and the bulk of them were full time, Statistics Canada said in its latest labour force survey.

For that's one amazing record, and so is this one...

Wow. One. Million. Jobs. In less than four years. And so soon after these numbers...

Do these guys know what they're doing or what?

And what a difference from the days when Stephen Harper tried to fool Canadians into believing that he was a Great Economist Leader...  

Only to fail over and over again.

Of course it's not just the Cons who are disappointed by the good economic news. 

I'm sure some of the toxic Trudeau haters of the "progressive" variety are also down in the dumps...

But nobody really cares what those losers have to say.

While for Andrew Scheer it's a more existential situation.

For he must surely have heard of the old expression, it's the economy stoopid !!!

He must know that the stronger the economy the slimmer his chances of winning the election...

Which explains why his Twitter feed is practically paralyzed, while the Cons figure out what to do next. While no doubt praying up a storm, hoping that a lot of Canadians lose their jobs in the next few months.

And all I can say is play it again Justin....

And wowser, wowser, wowser.

What a Prime Minister !!!!


  1. Your keyboard to St. Pierre's ears. I'll keep praying for Canada on my end. It would be idiotic of Canadians to throw all that away over "Crooked Hillary" BS. But as always, know your ABCs, keep calm and vote strategically.

    By the way, a letter I wrote is going to appear in the Hill Times on May 15. I'm going to delete the comment from yesterday, but I don't really care if Con trolls find out my name. What are they going to do? Get on their supermarket scooters and rush across the border to fire paintball guns at the home of a Trudeau supporter from the USA?

    Good luck, Canada. We're all counting on you.

    1. Hi Jackie....Because Callum published your comment and I was away, I never got to read it, so I don't know why you deleted it. But I'm sure it was a good one.😉 And yes, strategic will be the way to go. Anyone but Cons...

  2. Anonymous12:47 AM

    Hi Simon, I too have noticed how the Cons seem to have run out of things to attack. Now they seem to be in a defensive mode trying to make us believe that they are not racists, and climate change deniers. They used to attack the "job killing carbob tax" at least once a day, now they haven't done that for almost two weeks. Their whole strategy seems to be falling apart and it couldn't be happening at a better time.

    1. yes the good old job killing carbon tax. if this tax is job killing, may it continue. we in B.C. have had it almost for 2 decades and it is not killing B.C.'s economy.

      ECONOMIES WAX and wane, frequently for no apparent reason. Right now things are going well and better than when the Conservatives were in office.

      The Child Benefits are most likely helping things along. It gives families more purchasing power, while lifting them out of poverty.

    2. Hi anon...yes I've noticed that too. They seemed to have concluded that they can't continue with their two year smear campaign and that now they are ahead in the polls they need to pretend that they can govern . good luck with that one...

  3. Here ya go Simon, a PSA to share with your followers. ABC, easy as 123.

    1. Hi Jackie...Thanks for the handy slogan "Keep calm and block the Cons." And for the Jackson Five song ABC. I don't know about that one but strategic voting will have to be a weapon in our arsenal, especially if the Con media keeps trying to elect the Cons...

  4. The truth about SNL and Norman will never make the mainstream. All day long I heard including Conrad Black say it proves the libs are incompetent and corrupt.
    Its nuts

  5. Anonymous8:41 AM

    The Cons and their Con MSM sure are quiet these days. Incapable of giving credit where credit's due is a testament to their petulant ways and means. Without their fake scandals they have nothing to bray about and it highlights what they have to offer Canadians, nothing, nada, zilch, zero. They're as empty and shallow as their caricature of a "leader", Scheer. The empty suit who may be able to give you a quote on your insurance or how best to kiss someone's ass, but other than that, nothing. The party of nothing is seething at this great economic news and instead of embracing it, they look into their empty bag of tricks seeking anything to attack JT with.
    Until the next fake scandal erupts, let us rejoice in our record low unemployment rates and our government's policies that are clearly working. Let us also rejoice at the party of nothing having nothing to feed their MSM enablers. Let's enjoy it while it lasts.


      I don't ever wade into the social media vomitorium, but I did add this to the popular lexicon.

      Or nihilistic personality disorder, another fitting diagnosis for the co-dependent M$M and the party of nothing. Like Heather Mallick says, they have "PM envy."

    2. the majority of people are only interested in keeping their jobs, insuring their children are educated and have a decent medical care. The"scandals" which we have aren't true scandals. No infractions of our constitution, which we had as a min. 8 times during Harper's reign, so if things continue as they are, people will simply return the Liberals to office, perhaps with a few fewer seats, but they'll still be in office.

    3. Hi JD...You're right, it's like musical chairs, when the fake scandals stop playing the Cons have to cover their asses, because apart from those scandals they've got nothing. You might think the Cons, or at least the NDP, might celebrate the good economic news. But the two can't separated these days so no such luck...

  6. This timeline shows some interesting things :

    The names involve in the 15 years involved are interesting. Martin , a shipping magnate, didn't get any ships built. Harpers promised big and delivered small. No ships, just a shipbuilding plan he forgot to fund. Ship building finally started under Trudeau . Reformatory cabinet weasels include Rona Ambrose ( the invisible lady, Potato Pete MacKay and chaste and chubby Kenny .

    In April 2015 Kenny , at a reformatory cabinet meeting, sold the Davie no-compete contract as a purely political move. The cons needed it to keep the Levis seat in the upcoming election. Responsible government indeed.

    To move the plot forward Norman was chosen in August 15 as a liason to Davies. His email contact was Spenser Fraser . Its no wonder Davies won the contract, they had a way to tailor the bid to mesh perfectly with the Harper/DND plans. The contract was signed just before the reformatories lost the 2015 election. The liberals got the ship built.

    Now we hear Jason and Pete quacking and woofing about new evidence. It can only be from their days at the helm. Are they insinuating that Norman had their permission for the communications with Davies ? Just like Trump and Nixon, its not a crime if we do it.

    With the case closed, we will have to wait for the post retirement appointments to defence contractor consulting and lobbying jobs to see who gets the loot.


    1. rumleyfips12:58 PM
      This timeline shows some interesting things :

      No, it doesn't. It doesn't show any "interesting things" shows some way off-topic things, and is as lame an attempt at deflection as I've ever seen.

    2. Hi rumleyfips...Thanks that was really interesting. The real scandal is the way the Cons behaved. But somehow they and the grubby stooge media managed to turn it into a Liberal problem. Thank you for trying to set the record straight, or getting the truth to set us free...

  7. Anonymous2:01 PM

    Well gang, it bears reminding you the Norman affair was on the the present government's watch.
    To imply ministers of the former government were sitting on information for political purposes is a stretch.
    The Crown's case started to unravel months ago when these ministers and others were interviewed by the defence team.
    This is after it became apparent the RCMP and Crown were not going to interview them.
    It may also had something to do with Harper waiving cabinet secrecy, do you think?

    As for the employment numbers, kudos to private industry!

    1. Read the timeline :

      Procurement rules were abandoned for a no-compete contract by Harper and Kenny. Note the report of Kenny telling the con cabinet that it was for crass political purposes.

      The deal went down just a few days before Trudeau took over.

    2. @rumleyfips

      Thank you for bringing the receipts. I feel really bad for Justin. Harper left so many damn nuclear landmines in his wake because he couldn't stand getting beat fair and square by a Trudeau. Justin was so right (he's always been right!), none of these catastrophes (the SNC swiftboating post cabinet shuffle and now this) would have happened were it not for Scott Brison's retirement, the catalyst of it all. Brison himself was a Con at one point so one wonders if he has any lingering sympathies or was just a mole all along.

      @anon 2:01 -- More like kudos to Justin Trudeau making Canada friendly to a diversified economy! Government policies either attract or repel the private sector. Trump's xenophobia chased away tech jobs to Canada. His idiotic tariffs are going to gut the U.S. economy and possibly cause a global collapse. He inherited the Obama boom and made it go bust. The Deep South's extremist racial holy war against LGBT people, women and immigrants is incurring massive boycotts that will leave Dixieland an economic wasteland, but sure enough the rubes will do their usual tantrum of blaming old Mr. Lincoln for being a mean old bully who gutted God's great gifts of cotton farming and chattel slavery. Read up on what happened to North Carolina after their transphobic "bathroom bill" chased away business en masse. Or what's happening in Georgia as a result of their retrograde fanaticism about abortion. Business is about PR and nobody wants to be on the side of bigotry or indecency.

      As for Canada, Dougie's time-warp fiefdom in Ontario isn't exactly open for business, is it? He got sued by Tesla and lost, and he can't even sell beer and his choice product, (legal) dope. Kenney was shocked, shocked I say, to get such a hostile reaction from Toronto executives to his anti-carbon tax pitch, because surprise surprise, business wants to hedge its bets against risk, and ignorance of the #1 existential threat to not just the economy but humanity itself certainly qualifies as that!

      Economies always do better under Liberal (CAD) and Democratic (USD) governments. The only beneficiaries under RepubliCons are the war machine, the dying (and planet-murdering) extraction industries, and predatory finance. The industries of tomorrow are opening up shop in Canada because of policies and frameworks pursued by the Trudeau government. Harper put all his dinosaur eggs in the oil basket (er, drum) to the exclusion of all else, and the only thing that would thrive under Scheer ("God forbid") would be a "gig economy" of back-alley abortionists. And maybe Mechanical Turk troll farms paid peanuts by One Persuades. Oh, and guns, guns, guns, lots and lots of guns. Only by re-electing Trudeau would that nightmare scenario not be the case.

      Sorry, but "governments don't create jobs" is a right-wing meme that needs to die.

  8. It says right in the article that the government and the RCMP actually DID NOT ASK for any information from the Conservatives (and exactly what information could they have volunteered without knowing specifically what was required?). Mark Norman's defense team DID ask. How do you figure that this makes the Conservatives look bad in any way? How should they have known what kind of case the government was trying to build against Vice Admiral Mark Norman, and thus what information might be pertinent?

    No, this only makes the Liberals look bad (again)...especially when you consider what the whole case was about. Yyou DO know what was alleged, right? And why? I thought 'progressives' were all about protecting whistle-blowers and exposing government corruption...was I wrong?

    1. Dear Fred:

      The conservatives look bad because they ignored procurement rules to award ( without competition ) a contract for political reasons. Kenny told Harper's cabinet this was the reason for the shady deal.

      Ir I remember correctly, Harper, Ambrose, MacKay and Kenny have never been members of a Liberal government.

    2. "The conservatives look bad because they ignored procurement rules to award ( without competition ) a contract for political reasons."

      That's nice, but what does it have to do with the fact that Simon accused the Conservatives of "sitting on information, that had they delivered to the RCMP, could have ended Norman's prosecution long ago."?

      Nothing, that's what. It's COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the subject at hand, in fact. So the Conservatives awarded a no-compete contract what? So have the Liberals. So have the NDP. Nobody cares. That was NOT THE POINT of Simon's post, and you know it.

      Go back and re-read it if you have to, and don't quit your day job (as a 'spin doctor', you suck...;)

    3. HI Fred...don't try to confuse the stark facts. Harper and his gang awarded a no competition contract for crass political purposes. And after all the media coverage don't tell me those three Con ministers didn't know how they could have helped Norman. You really must think we are fools. But sooner or later we will teach you grubby Cons a lesson you will never forget...

    4. "HI Fred...don't try to confuse the stark facts. "

      Why would I do that when they are on my side?

      "Harper and his gang awarded a no competition contract for crass political purposes. "

      Sure, same as the Liberals and NDP do all the time? Problem is, you *didn't know that* when you wrote this it's a little rich for you to be trying to make an issue of it now.

      " And after all the media coverage don't tell me those three Con ministers didn't know how they could have helped Norman. " said this:




      ...which is fine, except that the link you included with it said THIS:


      Two former senior Conservative cabinet ministers who had knowledge of the naval procurement deal at the centre of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s breach-of-trust case say they spoke with the senior naval officer’s defence team and provided information about the contract.


      ---and if you read the article (you DID read it, right?) you will find that Jason Kenney met with Norman's lawyers LAST YEAR. After the RCMP (representing the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau) DID NOT CONTACT him (or any of the former ministers). So the Liberal government knew about this LAST YEAR, but refused to act on it (!) Mark Norman's very expensive lawyer offered it...they just refused it. The article also says that the Liberals *withheld* information from the prosecution that would have helped their case (they aren't allowed to do that either,'s illegal).

      So again, I state the same simple fact: the Conservatives DID NOT AT ANY TIME "withhold" any information that would have shortened the case against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. That didn't happen. It's A LIE. The Liberals were the ones who dragged this out as long as they possibly could, not the Conservatives.

      I'm sorry...I can't make it any simpler than that.

  9. For Canada it is the invisible hand mostly. Price of oil , US economy that makes us roll. What is remarkable is that despite the USA screwing us daily on oil, we have this kind of result. This is the strongest ecomomy in generations, because JT said we are not going to be Harper lite 18th century economist.

    1. Steve3:30 PM
      "at the end of the day its always about making a sustainable economy."

      No, at the end of *this* day it is about the Liberals, once again, attempting to interfere politically to let one of their good corporate friends profit financially. It's about someone blowing the whistle on them, and the Trudeau Liberals reacting angrily, lashing out and attempting to destroy someone (the *wrong* someone, it seems) in retaliation. It really is that simple, and that's why calls are being made now for a PUBLIC INQUIRY (what, again?) into the whole affair.

      Don't worry, it's not over yet. Far from it.

    2. In April 2015, Kenny told the Con cabinet that they needed to steer a contract to Davies for political advantage; the Levis riding in the upcoming election. It's easy to find and to read.

      Hard to feature how the reformatories giving a sweetheart contract to a tory favoured company to help themselves politically is political interference by anybody but Harper, Kenny et al.

    3. wonder if Kenney will award any contracts to clean up the abandoned wells of his favour oil companies. Interesting articles are abounding about how oil companies have left people's property's in horrible condition. They failed to pay their property taxes to local municipalities, etc. If Jason is concerned about the unemployment in Alberta due to a decline in jobs in the oil industry, they could start ramping up employment by remediating all those oil wells. Its going to cost billions.
      Another e.g. of how the Conservatives look after the environment. the law in Alberta has always forced land owners to accept oil wells on their property. The companies do have to pay the land owner, but when they abandon the wells, the land owner is left with a huge mess and no money and no government assistance. Welcome to the world of Conservatism.

  10. at the end of the day its always about making a sustainable economy. The purpose of the economy is to serve people, not for people to fit the economy. Thats why there is only one system that will work, that is a just society.

  11. Anonymous4:22 PM

    That picture of Chicken Harper made me laugh and reminded me of the hundreds of millions of dollars he spent trying to make us believe that he was a great economist. But he never created any jobs while Justin Trudeau has created a million jobs and we now have the lowest unemployment rate in 40 years. Trudeau isn't just a great Prime Minister he's a Con slayer!!!!

    1. Hi anon...I'm glad you liked that version of Chicken Harper, I have so many versions of that old Con artist posing as a Great Economist Leader, I had a hard time deciding which one to use. But of course the Cons have an even greater problem. How to attack a Liberal government with a million jobs in its pocket...

  12. Is there a limit to the number of flattery articles and photos one newspaper chain can make to a politician before it becomes a violation of campaign contributions?
    I think the national post and sun are testing this daily.

    1. hi Steve....There is no limit to how low the acorn media will go. They have debased themselves to a point where they can only be called propaganda sheets, and if there was any justice should be put out of business. They have corrupted our democracy and should be shunned by all decent Canadians...

    2. Lots of "decent" Canadians buy newspapers. The buy them for the comics, the sports, and to find the latest sales. There is nothing wrong with that. The simply might want to find another source for their news.

      the market will decide whether the news paper chains fail or not. However, as bad as most newspaper chains are when it comes to reporting all sorts of news, a country without newspapers is simply not going to do well. Many may think every thing can be found on line, but you'd be surprised how many areas do not have internet in this country and there is just as much fake and bad news on line as this is in print. with out newspapers our democracy would be even further corrupted.

      It is in our country's best interests to have newspapers which report the news without an over riding bias. However, that requires a great deal of money.

  13. Anonymous11:34 PM

    So cons harrumph about the jobs having absolutely nothing to do with the government, then out of the other side of their mouths tell us the government's policies are driving away business. Will they claim all these jobs are just for packers and movers for massive business relocation to friendlier jurisdictions?

    During Harper's time we heard all about invisible hands (and even invisible friends) which made things happen and were somehow a result of his government's policies in ways too complicated for us mere taxpayers to understand. We were to shut up and let the duly elected leaders lead. Now of course we are asked exactly how is 4 cents going to make China stop building coal plants. We're not allowed to consider that a carbon tax will encourage businesses to find better ways to do things, and eventually we could sell those solutions to the rest of the world. Well maybe not sell, our geography forced us to innovate in telecommunications but Nortel tried to sell solutions to China which promptly stole them and called it Huawei.

    We are told that carbon tax fueled innovation is fantasy and why are you driving a car and not living in a grass hut if you want to stop global warming which by the way was rebranded as climate change, even though somehow the IPCC was named for climate change in 1992. I admit I have a certain admiration for this kind of incessant deflection and trollery, just as I admired the old buying an argument skit (no it isn't). But just as Trudeau admired China's ability to get things done quickly due to being a dictatorship (something he said then PM Harper would appreciate) the second part of the answer gave the most admiration to the Nunavut legislature where they don't have a one party state, they have no parties. So I have more admiration to actual alternative points of view, reasonably explained, rather than word torturing and spinning everything to mean the libs better replace Trudeau fast to save the furniture.

    Why do we hear incessantly about the job killing 4 cent carbon tax, yet gas has gone up 30 cents a litre since February. Scrap the carbon tax and gas will be cheaper for a week, then unforeseen circumstances out of our control will require raising the price again. Then when the high price starts having the same effect as a carbon by encouraging alternatives, it will be lowered long enough to force the alternatives out of business. I think that is the real point of a carbon tax. It provides a stable financial incentive to innovate, which yo yo gas price changes do not. Back when the horse infrastructure was being replaced by cars, they couldn't just make the horses cheaper for a while to drive those job killing horseless carriages out of business. But then the government got involved and started paving roads and building traffic control systems that favoured the car. No they didn't need traffic signals for horse and buggy traffic before. As cars got better and better the avalanche effect accelerated the changeover. So it will be be with the change to electric vehicles. I know, I know, how will they ever replace the giant Clydesdales, but there are actually battery powered short run airplanes being built. It will take several years but the same avalanche effect will occur. A carbon tax is a relatively small push but will help and may give us an eventual advantage in any innovations we make as a result. Giving the 4 cents back to the oil industry will not do that.

    1. Hi anon...Thank you for that excellent comment. One of the most depressing things about the Con assault on carbon taxes is that we will be left behind by most of the other countries in the world. Greening our economy is not a choice it's an absolute necessity. When the tar ponds are forced out of business, we might as well go back to steam power if the Cons are in power. I travel to Scotland all the time, and when I see what that country is doing to shake off its dependence on fossil fuels it only reinforces how little we're doing...

  14. Anonymous10:12 AM

    Fallout from the Con's National shipbuilding strategy was the creation of powerful politically charged lobby groups who were prepared to use leaked documents and regional employment as their political weapon. For example in the Davie's affair “If it does transpire to be that, I will do a full page plea in the Globe and Mail to Scott Brison asking that this Nova Scotia minister put his regional bias aside for matters of national security. …then I will lay off 400 guys next week.”
    The rest is speculation but it is likely the RCMP investigation found that Normand either deliberately or inadvertently leaked confidential information and in an effort to prevent this type contract manipulation in the future the Liberals decided to set an example. Turns out it was a bad idea as Normand was front run by another leaker. So here we are, all of the tickets and popcorn has been sold, the crowd is waiting for the big reveal and poof the show has been cancelled.
    Few if any are looking at how we got here and is there a better way. Clearly creating a large military industrial complex similar to the US is not the answer but some form of national ownership is also fraught with problems. What is best practice in other countries? Unfortunately we will never know as long as there is political mileage in taking basic news and spinning it into a never ending stream of sensationalized opinion pieces.


    1. ah ship building. we could have a national ship yard for military use, a Crown corporation. The State of Washington, has a ferry system, owned by the State. It is the law in the State of Washington that all their ferries must be built in the state of Washington, hence the state owned ferry building ship yards.

      Now in B.C. where we had the LiberCon Gordon Campbell good free enterpriser he was, had ferries built in Germany, so of course all the jobs went there. He was also able to borrow $750M at the same time and list it as debt owed by the Ferry Corporation. Ferries for the b.c. ferries Corp. in are build anywhere they can make a buck. In the meantime any older ferries they sell off to the Phillipines for pennies on the dollar and when one of the regular B.C. Ferries break down, we don't have enough ferries.

      there is no reason Canada can not have a decent ship building industry. It provides jobs in the east and b.c. from a security point of view, its also better to have ships built by your own country. building ships in the maritimes will create jobs, it will keep young people in their home provinces. when you look at what ever savings there is in sending ship building abroad and then factor in the cost of unemployed citizens, there is not savings.

      a crown corporation might well be the way to go. always have some ships being built, will help deal with any future unemployment blips.

  15. I kind of doubt Norman was trying to prevent anything RT. It looks like he acted as reformatory agent quite willingly and quite enthusiastically. The timeline above notes that Kenny and Norman cooked up the non compete scam together.

  16. Hi I understand this story, Norman did leak some information but since it was determined that everybody at DND does that all the time, the verdict was that he was guilty of behaving badly but wasn't a criminal. But was somehow a martyr to be used against the Liberals, even though the Cons and a desperate Harper were entirely responsible for awarding a single source contract to try to buy votes in Quebec. It's simply appalling, and yet another example of how low the corrupt Cons would take this country..l

  17. Interesting news item regarding Ford's latest assault on the sick in Ontario. Its these types of things which will help Scheer and the conservatives fail in this years federal election. The Ontario Conservatives' have decreed there will be a new system to "evaluate" those who qualify for disability benefits. As one person was quoted, "how will we eat". The idea is that you don't. You die, you go to soup kitchens, etc. as long as the conservatives can get you off of disability, so they think they can save money, lives don't matter.

    What is interesting about this is, B.C. LieberCons did this in B.C. and with former B.C. Premier, Gordon Campbell, "advising" ford, this will not go well for the disabled in Ontario, Attack the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised, etc. They will do it all under the guise of "helping" the sick.

    If Scheer and his Cons are elected to government we can expect the "ford/Campbell" system of social services to be extended across Canada. It will require cities to step up to deal with social services. This of course will place a huge burden on the City of Toronto.

  18. One has to wonder if this wasn't part of a struggle for control between Vance and Normmy.

    Few winners in the whole mess. The reformatories lost an election they expected to win. Vance looks wobbly. Norman took a hit that may keep on hurting. The libs are busy cleaning up yet another con mess. Only Davies did well. Rescued from bankruptcy and showered with cash by Jason.