Federal Conservatives Leadership "race"

It is tempting - oh Lord how tempting it is to look to the USA and mock their president!! Only observers who are on the far right of centre could ever see Trump as anything other than a buffoon. He speaks as if he is nearly illiterate with a rather limited vocabulary; he seems to have a only a few ideas as to what he wants to do; he appears to be unable to seek out and listen to advice from people who may know more than him and he is far too quick to blame others for his own faults. But if we, as Canadians, spend all of our energy criticizing him and our neighbours who may or may not have voted for him - we are at risk of missing what is happening politically in our country. Boycotting the Hudson's Bay Company because they sell Trump's daughter's clothing line may feel good but perhaps we should focus some of that energy on making sure that Canada is not heading down the same path as the USA.

The Federal Conservatives are in the midst of finding a new leader. To say that the debates, the press releases and any of the announced policy statements have been less than interesting would be an understatement. For the most part, unless one is a diehard conservative, the whole nomination process has been sleep inducing. It is easy to miss some of the rather frightening comments of some of the candidates. We all should be paying attention. There is for example Kellie Leitch who has proposed that immigrants should be screen to ensure that they have "Canadian" values (SUN) -in spite of the fact that no one including Ms. Leitch can define what are Canadian values, Maxime Bernier who amongst other things advocates for a relaxation of Canada's gun laws, Lisa Raitt, who along with a number of her fellow candidates wants to reduce the size of government (read reduce services) and lower taxes or perhaps worst of all Kevin O'Leary who has articulated the belief that what is good for business is good for Canada.

While O'Leary is certainly more polished than Mr. Trump and he may even be a more successful businessman than Trump, his proposed policies are as dangerous as Trump's are. He suggests that the present government is terrible in part because the leadership has no business background. He argues that  for Canada to flourish we need a government  that is primarily focused on the economy, a government that makes it easy for business to flourish even if that means deregulating  our banking laws ( the very laws that stopped our economy from crashing in 2008)or our environmental protections. His clearly arrogant suggestion is that only he has the skill set required to both negotiate with Trump and get the country turned around.  There are so many flaws in this argument that I find it  incredulous that O'Leary can get away with it - apparently unchallenged. Someone should perhaps mention to O'Learly that in the recent past (my lifetime) that Canada has only had two prime ministers who had some sort of business background (Paul Martin, Brian Mulroney). Both of them (especially Martin) had a long history of being elected to public office before running for leadership of their party.

While it has frequently been the case, it is not the job of governments to only focus on making the climates better for big business. There is absolutely no proof that countries that dramatically reduce business taxes, deregulate environmental protections or banking rules, or cut government programs are more likely to be successful than those countries who at least some of the time attempt to ensure that there are some social safety nets and that we do not leave it up to companies to do what is right. There is in fact ample proof that the "trickle down" theory of economics is wrong.

M. O'Leary  is in the lead (Toronto Star). If the vote was held tomorrow - he could be the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Which means he will get paid to run around the country for the next 18 months insulting various provincial premiers (CTV, Toronto Sun) whose policies he doesn't like, promising better jobs for everyone and flaunting his abrasive personality. He will promise things that can't be delivered on, criticize everyone who disagrees with him and argue that because he is successful - that only he knows the right answers.

Eighteen months ago - most people thought that a person saying these type of things would never get to be a candidate - never mind the elected leader. We now know that that is not true.  I  wonder what would happen if a whole bunch of those on the left became members of the Conservative Party and when we/they got chance to vote....we made sure that O'Leary and Leitch  didn't have a chance?

It would be fun to try.....