Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday June 1, 2017

It was a big, big week for Canadian political news, and Open Sources Guelph is here to analyze it all! Or some of it. Or four different topics in it. Well, three really. Okay, so obviously the big story is that there’s a new Official Opposition Leader, and he’s got a lot to do if he’s to unite the party and put together a campaign policy that can defeat the Trudeau Liberals in two years. We’ll talk about what happened at the Conservative convention, talk about what’s happening with the B.C. government, and how one form of terrorism is not being covered like the other.

This Thursday, June 1, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

1) 13 Rounds. 13 candidates, 13 rounds of voting, one leader with barely 50 per cent of the vote. More on that in a minute, but what did the leadership convention teach us about who the Conservative party is, where the party’s going, and the job that winning candidate, Andrew Scheer, will have to do to keep it all together? Social conservatives made a surprisingly strong showing, which demonstrates that they’ve still got a firm hand on the wheel to direct the party. Erin O’Toole also made a strong showing all the way through to the second-to-last round proving that there’s a place for a disciplined Red Tory on the podium. As for Bernier, well, there’s always next time…

2) Scheer Passionless. Yes, Andrew Scheer was the surprise winner of the Conservative leadership race and he has assumed his position now as the Leader of the Official Opposition. But is he a Prime Minister-in-Waiting? Social Conservatives think they’ve hit pay dirt, but Scheer’s already ruled out re-litigating same sex marriage and abortion, both of which he’s against. He’s abiding by the Harper playbook on that one. On the other hand, one of Scheer’s first official statements as Official Opposition leader was to suggest that he might revoke funding for Canadian universities that don’t support Free Speech, which seems very Trumpian, and his campaign website was taken down before the final vote was announced. So now what?

3) Orange and Green. The surprising results and uncertainty stemming from the recent provincial election in British Columbia got a whole lot less certain and a great deal more surprising this week when Green Party leader Andrew Weaver and B.C. NDP leader John Horgan announced that they were teaming up to form a government. With the Greens three seats, it gives an NDP coalition government a two-seat leg up on the Liberals, but how will Christy Clark react? She has two choices: give up power magnanimously, or force another election on a deeply divided B.C. electorate. What’s next for the B.C. legislature, and what becomes of the Kinder Morgan pipeline dreams if the coalition gets to proceed?

4) Right Flight. It was just a normal day in Portland when Jeremy Christian decided to harass a woman wearing a hijab on a commuter train. When two good samaritans, Rick Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, stepped in to help, Christian allegedly stabbed them to death and a third person that survived. The reaction by U.S. President Donald Trump was tepid, only posting a reference to the incident at his @POTUS Twitter account 72 hours after the attack. One must ask the question: Would Trump have done the same thing if it were a Muslim man harassing a white woman and stabbing good samaritans coming to her defense? And what of the media? Are two types of terror being treated differently?