Daily Archives: May 3, 2022

New documents show the exact amount a former staffer stole from the Nova Scotia Liberal Party.

The party recently released its 2021 financial statements and in those is a full accounting of the theft and associated costs totalling $194,557, all of which was recovered.

On Monday, the party's interim executive director, Doris Robbins, said the financial statements speak for themselves and declined further comment.

The document says the matter was discovered in 2021 and it was eventually learned unauthorized disbursements happened over several years.

In February 2021, the former employee paid back $19,557. Further investigation resulted in an additional $175,000 being repaid. According to a note in the financial statements, that included $62,762 related to legal and forensic audit costs, and $112,238 for money stolen.

Although the party and its board decided to deal with the issue in house, it eventually became public as emails about the matter started to leak earlier this year.

The situation led to bickering among board members and party officials, including former premier Stephen McNeil and the party president at the time, Joseph Khoury.

Khoury maintained throughout the process that the party followed proper procedures to deal with the theft and that everything related to that effort was above board.

Several Liberals organized a campaign to try to postpone the party's annual meeting in March, expressing concerns about a lack of information related to the theft. That effort was unsuccessful and the meeting went ahead without issue and without anyone asking questions about the situation, despite multiple opportunities to do so.

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N.S. Liberal Party recovered $195K related to internal theft - CBC.ca

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"(Saturday) night's landslide victory was the beginning of building our support and building momentum. We're going to continue to do that in every part of the province by the time the next election (in 2024) rolls around." Kevin Falcon

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Kevin Falcon has earned the right to spar with the New Democrats in the legislature following his decisive byelection win Saturday but the B.C. Liberal leader must also live up to his promises of rebranding and diversifying the party.

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After capturing 59 per cent of the vote in Vancouver-Quilchena, a traditional B.C. Liberal stronghold and one of the wealthiest ridings in the province, Falcon celebrated Sunday by doing crossword puzzles with his daughters, Josephine and Rose, and helping his wife, Jessica, with some yard work.

Im feeling great, Falcon told Postmedia News. (Saturday) nights landslide victory was the beginning of building our support and building momentum. Were going to continue to do that in every part of the province by the time the next election (in 2024) rolls around.

On the heels of a campaign where the NDP reminded the public of the social spending cuts while Falcon held cabinet roles in the Campbell and Clark governments, the leader of the official Opposition said his first priorities are to continue rebuilding and re-energizing the party and finding a candidate to replace outgoing Liberal MLA Stephanie Cadieux in South Surrey.

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Cadieux, who held the seat for 13 years, resigned on Friday to take a post as Canadas first chief accessibility officer. The government must set a date for the byelection within six months.

Falcon, 59, said its crucial that the B.C. Liberals attract diverse candidates so the party reflects the provinces diversity.

Were not going to do it with quotas like the NDP because, frankly, I think that hurts some of the very folks that youre trying to attract, Falcon said. I want to make sure we go out and find outstanding candidates who happen to be diverse, ethnically, culturally, sexually.

The New Democrats have a gender-balanced cabinet largely owing to party rules that state when a white male does not run again, the next candidate must be a woman or someone from an equity-seeking group.

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The race for Surrey South is likely to be a close one. The B.C. Liberals won the riding in 2020 with 47 per cent of the vote with the NDP close on their heels with 43 per cent. The Greens captured almost 10 per cent of the vote.

The B.C. Conservatives gains in Vancouver-Quilchena where their candidate Dallas Brodie won almost seven per cent of the vote raise the real prospect that the Conservatives, should they run a candidate in Surrey South, could chip away at the B.C. Liberals support.

This is the first time the B.C. Conservatives have run a candidate in the Vancouver-Quilchena riding, which was created in 1991.

Of course I always worry about vote splitting, said Falcon. It doesnt make a lot of sense but you know frankly the B.C. Conservatives, the only thing they have going for them is their name and theyre not connected to the federal Conservative party.

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Falcon is forging ahead with his promise to rebrand the party to remove any perception of ties to the federal Liberals. Former B.C. Liberal MLA Bill Bennett is heading the partys committee on the name change, Falcon said, which will have to address thorny issues such as ensuring future candidates dont run under the B.C. Liberals to cause more confusion.

If we can find an appropriate alternative name that gets across what we really are, which is a big tent party, that welcomes all of those that believe a private sector-driven economy is the best way to move our province forward, he said. And regardless of, you know, what God they may pray to or who they decide to love, I just think its important that they feel welcome in this big tent.

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Professor Stewart Prest, a Simon Fraser University political scientist, said the B.C. Liberals have to ensure the name change allows the party to attract new voters while not alienating their existing base.

An unsuccessful rebranding, Prest said, could risk pushing centrist voters to the NDP and sending more populist, right-of-centre voters to the B.C. Conservatives.

The Liberals really do have to thread a needle there, Prest said. How do you try to keep as much right-of-centre camp together while still making a play for those centrist voters? So any rebranding is going to have to try to accomplish both things at the same time.

Elections B.C. will confirm the results with a final vote on May 4 with final certification expected May 11. That means Falcon will have a few weeks during the spring session to debate Premier John Horgan and his cabinet during question period and budget estimates.

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In opposition, Falcon said hell hammer the NDP on affordability, citing government mismanagement as the cause of rising rents, house prices, gas prices and groceries.

Everything has become more expensive under this NDP government, he said.

Asked about how the B.C. Liberals will rebound after losing 13 seats in the October 2020 election, resulting in its lowest seat count in three decades, Falcon said the opposition parties wont be hampered by the NDPs snap election call during a pandemic.

The NDP broke the law we put in place for fixed election dates, so that they could call it to their advantage in the middle of a crisis, being the COVID pandemic, Falcon said. And that was an extraordinarily unusual set of events that gave them, yes, a majority but at a time when the public is very unlikely to vote for a change in the middle of a pandemic. They will not have that benefit next time around.

Falcon spent 12 years in the Liberal government which included cabinets posts under the governments of Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark. He left politics in 2012 to work in the private sector, most recently at Vancouver-based real estate development and private equity firm.

kderosa@postmedia.com

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Kevin Falcon eyes Liberal party renewal with his seat in the house secured - Vancouver Sun

For many people, a knock on the door from a party activist is a rare occasion when politics intrudes on their lives and they sometimes ask a question that seems obvious to political anoraks but deserves a proper answer: What is your party for?

Unlike the Labour party with its trade union roots or the SNP with their tunnel-vision obsession with independence, the Liberal Democrats can seem more challenging to pin down.

Lib Dems are not just defined by tax policy, or whether we believe in the Union. Instead, we are motivated by a deep-held belief in the power of liberalism to help people reach their full potential and a burning belief in the importance of local decision-making.

Its our belief that in Scotland, no matter who you are or the start youve had in life, everyone should be afforded the opportunity to thrive.

Every Liberal Democrat candidate is a local champion, someone who will work late into the night figuring out ways to fix your concerns. No party will outdo us on that front. We fight harder, work longer and care more.

We will fight to guarantee our communities access to adequate housing and well-funded public services, like education and healthcare.

Well do everything we can to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and reduce NHS waiting times, whilst making sure bins are collected and potholes filled.

Lib Dems understand all those little things add up. We sweat the small stuff because it makes a difference. Thats why we want to deliver a power surge to local councils, giving them more control over budgets, business rates and planning decisions, so they can serve you without one hand tied behind their back by distant SNP ministers.

Ive recently met thousands of voters across the country. Many of them are tired, and its no wonder. These last two years have put everyone through the ringer.

The pandemic has been harrowing and its hit people in their pocketbooks, just as the price of food and energy soars. Many are anxious about the future.

After everything weve been through, Scotland needs a new approach, new hope.

In the SNPs 15 years in power, theyve starved councils of the funds to deliver vital local services, whilst making a litany of unforced errors, costing millions of pounds of taxpayers money with no consequences for those culpable.

Meanwhile its a case of the less said, the better when it comes to Boris Johnsons Conservatives, who partied their way through lockdown while so many sacrificed so much to keep others safe.

People are fed up. So, its time to send a clear, unambiguous message: its time for change. Its time to move beyond the tired old nationalism that has defined our politics, north and south of the Border, for too long.

We need to be able to look to the future with a sense of optimism, safe in the knowledge that the things that really matter will be front and centre.

Thats what the Scottish Liberal Democrats are for. Put your faith in us on Thursday. You wont regret it.

Alex Cole-Hamilton is Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP for Edinburgh Western

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Council elections in Scotland: What are the Liberal Democrats for? Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP - Edinburgh News

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Leadership candidate's messaging on affordability resonating hard with young people, even Liberal and NDP young people

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First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Posts own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent direct to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Saturdays), sign up here.

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As Pierre Poilievres star continues its rise in the Conservative leadership race, there are rumblings among Canadas non-conservative circles that the only way to stop the 42-year-olds momentum may be to wise up to his resonating messages on affordability.

Without the electoral imagination to understand why people would vote for Poilievre, it will be difficult for Liberals to convince people why they shouldnt, wrote the veteran Liberal strategist Andrew Tumiltyin a recent column for the Toronto Star. Rhetoric aside, Poilievre is talking about housing, affordability, inflation and freedom, Tumilty added.

An Abacus poll conducted after Poilievre launched his campaign found that his overall messaging on affordability was resonating quite strongly among both NDP and Liberal voters particularly young ones. Notably, 51 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds surveyed said they would consider voting for a Poilievre-led Conservative Party.

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A recent poll of student conservatives in B.C. similarly found that Poilievre was the clear favourite for the under-40 set. Among young Conservatives at B.C.s four largest universities, 77.6 per cent backed Poilievre.

OFFICIAL: Results of our BC Student Vote for the Conservative leadership. Students at University of British Columbia(UBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU), and University of Victoria (UVic). Great to see such enthusiasm from our young conservatives on campus! pic.twitter.com/054r3nH2qI

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Earlier this month, Poilievre won widespread attention for a viral video decrying the soaring cost of Vancouver real estate and blaming it on gatekeepers such as civic governments blocking development and raising the costs of construction. TVO columnist John Michael McGrath, for one, reacted to the video by saying progressives could either craft a compelling alternative message of their own or brace for a Prime Minister Poilievre.

Its probably why Poilievre has doubled-down on the message in recent weeks. His campaign has subsequently rolled out proposals to withhold federal funding to municipalities that block home building.

With so much land & few people, owning a home in Canada should be achievable, but instead it's further & further out of reach.

As PM, I'm putting big city gatekeepers on notice: if they want all their federal funding, they must build homes.

Join, vote: https://t.co/d9I1ky9w2t pic.twitter.com/hiDFuLWv83

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Colin Horgan, who has worked on Liberal campaigns, wrote in a Medium post that Poilievres populist pitch on affordability appeared to be working, and even compared it to Justin Trudeaus 2015 messaging about uplifting the middle class. Affordability is the new middle class. And Pierre Poilievre is talking about in a way that makes people want to listen. Watch out, wrote Horgan.

Poilievres housing proposals have even won praise among liberal circles in the United States. In a recent column published in the Washington Post, the centre-left writer Matthew Yglesias said the anti-NIMBY sentiments being pushed by Poilievre and others should be a model to U.S. Republicans. If federal action to discourage municipal overregulation is good enough for the Canadian right, then it should be good enough for the American right, too, he wrote.

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Poilievre has topped every single poll of Conservative leadership candidates since the race began, and has collected a wildly disproportionate share of official endorsements.

As per an Ipsos poll last week, 37 per cent of Conservative voters expected Poilievre to take their partys crown. Only 14 per cent predicted victory for Poilievres closest competitor, former Quebec premier Jean Charest.

This is all occurring as the Conservative Party itself is seeing surging popularity. A Nanos Research poll last week found the Conservative Party enjoying 35.6 per cent support against 30 per cent for the Liberals. This is not only one of the highest showings for the Tories since the onset of COVID-19, but its more than enough to win them government should the numbers hold up in a general election.

Even Gerald Butts, the strenuously pro-Liberal former advisor to Prime Minister Trudeau, had some oblique praise for the Conservative frontrunner in a Thursday tweet.

His crypto stuff is banana muffins crazy, but Poilievres french is fantastic.

Guess which one of these two things matters more in a general election.

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Butts slammed Poilievres proposals on cryptocurrency as banana muffins crazy, but praised his pitch-perfect French (Poilievre was raised in a Franco-Albertan household). Guess which one of these two things matters more in a general election, wrote Butts.

Get all of these insights and more into your inbox every weekday at 6 p.m. ET by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.

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FIRST READING: Liberal voices starting to warn Pierre Poilievre could be their undoing - National Post

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The vast majority of handguns used in crimes are smuggled pieces that are already illegal

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First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Posts own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent direct to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Saturdays), sign up here.

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With Liberal officials now openly mulling the idea of a nationwide ban on handguns, they are simultaneously pursuing reforms that would slacken the penalties for cross-border gun-smugglers.

And according to police in Canadas most violence-afflicted cities, its these smuggled guns that are a far deadlier problem for Canada than the legal ones have ever been.

Starting in 2018, the Trudeau government began examining the possibility of a full ban on handguns and assault weapons in Canada. So far, this has only yielded proposals to allow cities to ban handguns at the municipal level a measure that, while welcomed in the likes of Toronto and Montreal, has been vocally opposed in Alberta.

This week, senior sources quoted by the National Posts John Ivison said that a total handgun ban remains a last resort in the result that more localized bans dont take.

Meanwhile, the House of Commons is still considering Bill C-5, an act that would repeal a host of mandatory minimum penalties, including those for smuggling firearms.

Bill C-5 was drafted to address what it called systemic racism in Canadas criminal justice system. By reducing the amount of prison time for criminal offences, reads a backgrounder, the idea is to reduce the overincarceration rate of Indigenous peoples as well as for other marginalized Canadians.

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Fulfilling our campaign commitment to re-introduce former Bill C-22 within the first 100 days, today @DavidLametti tabled Bill C-5 - an important step in addressing systemic racism and the overincarceration of Indigenous peoples and Black Canadians in the criminal justice system. https://t.co/DZNil1NWGr

While the bill would reduce prison time for non-violent offences such as drug trafficking or selling black market tobacco, it also repeals the minimum sentences for more than a dozen violent crimes ranging from aggravated sexual assault with a firearm and hostage taking, use of a firearm. Four of the bills repeals also relate to the gun-smuggling trade, including the charge of weapons trafficking.

Nevertheless, its smuggled guns that seem to be comprising an ever-growing share of handguns used in crimes.

In February, Toronto Police Deputy Chief Myron Demkiw told the House of Commons public safety committee that of the crime guns his department has been able to trace, 86 per cent were illegal firearms smuggled in from the United States.

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When asked about federal efforts to curb Canadian legal gun ownership through buyback programs, Denkiw replied that it is certainly not going to deal with the crime problem were facing in Toronto, as it relates to the use of criminal handguns.

As far back as 2008, a report by the Province of British Columbia similarly found that the vast majority of guns being used illegally in their province originated in the United States.

A 2021 investigation by CityTV outlined just how easy it was to get illegal guns into Ontario from the neighbouring U.S. states of Michigan or New York. Moving firearms into the Greater Toronto area could be as simple as throwing a bag over a border fence to be retrieved later. Illegal firearms were also moved through cross-border First Nations reserves and via secret compartments in private cars some of which were not even known to the cars owners.

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With vanishingly few exceptions, legal handguns exist in Canada only as antiques or sporting equipment. Any firearm with a barrel shorter than 470 mm cannot be used for hunting, which means that pistols (or restricted firearms) occupy a particularly strict realm of Canadian law.

While an unloaded long gun can be kept in the trunk of a vehicle or even legally carried in most jurisdictions, restricted firearms can only really be kept in a safe, at a certified range or in a vehicle driving between one of those two places.

The federal government is soon set to begin its official inquiry into Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act in order to clear anti-mandate blockades in February. For those hoping for answers on why Ottawa needed to temporarily suspend civil liberties merely to clear a relatively conventional mass-protest, its looking like the inquiry will be neatly dodging any uncomfortable findings for the government by only probing the actions of protesters, and not the official response.

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Meanwhile, criticisms have also befallen Canadas only other active federally sponsored inquiry. The Mass Casualty Commission, an inquiry into the April 2020 mass shooting that killed 22 people in rural Nova Scotia, has been plagued by accusations of mismanagement or bias, particularly after a raft of evidentiary documents mysteriously disappeared from the commissions official website.

As soaring real estate prices continue to solidify Canadas standing as one of the worlds most unaffordable places to buy a home, a new Ipsos poll has found that among Canadians who dont already own a home, 63 per cent of them have already abandoned all hope of ever owning one. The poll comes the same week as a Bloomberg report finding that the average price of a Canadian home is now double that of the average prices of a home in the United States.

Get all of these insights and more into your inbox every weekday at 6 p.m. ET by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.

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FIRST READING: Another Liberal gun policy that neatly ignores where the guns come from - National Post

Conservative MP and leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre arrives for a press conference outside the Bank of Canada in Ottawa, on April 28.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Earlier this week, Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre held a press conference and, once again, rubbished the Bank of Canada.

The message was confusing something about prohibiting the bank from establishing a digital currency and bringing in the auditor general. Informed heads shook disapprovingly.

But Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, offered this tweet:

His crypto stuff is banana muffins crazy, but Poilievres french is fantastic. Guess which one of these two things matters more in a general election.

Smart Liberals know Mr. Poilievre isnt really campaigning against a central-bank-based digital currency. Hes campaigning against entitled elites gatekeepers, he calls them who have made housing unaffordable and vaccines mandatory, who worry more about global warming and acknowledging unceded Indigenous lands than about the price of gas and having to give up beef for chicken.

Smart Liberals know the Carleton MP is the most serious threat they have faced since Stephen Harper reunited Conservatives in 2004.

Mr. Poilievre continues to generate big crowds and disapproving headlines. Tom Brodbeck of the Winnipeg Free Press accused him of engaging in Donald Trump-style politics.

Pierre Poilievre says he would oppose Bank of Canadas proposed digital currency as PM

Finally, a Conservative leadership race with more than one shade of blue

The former U.S. president made a political career out of lying to Americans and attacking the integrity of public institutions, such as the courts, intelligence agencies and the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mr. Brodbeck wrote. Poilievres tactics are very similar.

Mr. Brodbeck reflects the progressive narrative: Pierre Poilievre is exploiting incoherent anger in a populist campaign that, if successful, could polarize Canadian politics and bring great harm to the country.

The progressive narrative also asserts that high levels of immigration and the embrace by younger voters of the rights of women and minorities have combined to create a diverse and tolerant society that some less-educated, rural, evangelical, white voters resent, though their influence will diminish over time.

The facts, however, say something else. In the U.S., there are 28 states with Republican governors, and only 22 with Democratic governors. In Canada, conservative governments of one brand or another dominate every large province except British Columbia.

Donald Trump was probably the worst president in American history, and Democrats were able to defeat him. But many analysts expect the Democrats will lose control of both the House of Representatives and Senate in this years midterm elections. And unless President Joe Biden reverses his dismal approval rating, the GOP is likely to win back the presidency in 2024.

In Canada, Justin Trudeaus Liberals have won three consecutive elections. But they lost the popular vote in two of them. And a Nanos poll this week has the Conservatives at 36 per cent support and the Liberals at 30.

What struck pollster Nik Nanos was that younger voters preferred both the Conservatives and the New Democrats over the Liberals.

The combination of fatigue with the Liberals, the pandemic and the squeeze on the cost of living is shaking what was once a bedrock of support for the federal Liberals, he said.

(One thousand adult Canadians, phone-based, using a four-week rolling average of 250 each week, accurate within 2.9 percentage points 19 times out of 20.)

Young voters swinging Conservative contradicts the progressive narrative. So does labour backing Tories. But on the eve of the Ontario election campaign, the Labourers International Union supports Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford, and is running an ad attacking Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca.

The Ford government has done more in these four years when it comes to labour, labour legislation, for workers and training than Del Ducas Liberals did when they were in office, Joe Mancinelli, head of the union for Eastern Canada, told Brian Lilley of the Toronto Sun.

As for the angry-white-populist trope, in the United States there is growing support for the Republican party among Latinos. In Ontario, Doug Ford is popular with suburban immigrant voters, and Mr. Poilievre is actively courting those same voters.

Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre is far from inevitable. The Liberals have plenty of time to assess the threat and meet it, perhaps with a new leader. But ask yourself this:

How likely is it that the standard Liberal tactic of accusing the Conservatives of being pro-gun, anti-abortion, racist and stupid will work on Pierre Poilievre?

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Will the standard Liberal tactics of accusing Conservatives of being pro-gun and anti-abortion work on Pierre Poilievre? - The Globe and Mail