Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Timothy Wilson reports on the emerging revelations of Enbridge's paying to harass environmental activists. And Jeremy Appel offers the background facts as to W. Brett Wilson's abandonment of wells operated by Forent Energy - leaving Alberta's public to pick up the tab for his company's failure to clean up its messes. 

- And based on those stories among others, there's ample reason both to agree with Nicolas Perrone's argument that we shouldn't pay reparations to fossil fuel companies for transitioning to a cleaner society, and take into account his warning that they'll consider themselves entitled to nothing less.

- Amanda Follett Hosgood reports on the RCMP's pitiful response to the report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. And PressProgress exposes how Lib MP Kevin Lamoureux arranged to pay public money to a "subject matter expert" to prepare a petition to treat criticism of police as hate speech. 

- Robert Baird writes about the history of the idea of "whiteness", as well as the role it's played in justifying or excusing the treatment of people as subhuman.

- Finally, Dale Smith discusses how the Cons are using concern trolling and delay tactics to prevent the passage of legislation to ban conversion therapy.

The aftermath

Alice has the definitive rundown from last night's by-elections - which from the standpoint of wanting to see the most progressive candidate win turned into about as gory a train wreck as possible. So let's take a look at what went wrong, and how to improve matters in future trips to the polls.

Obviously the biggest disappointment came in Winnipeg North, where Lib Kevin Lamoureux narrowly beat out the NDP's Kevin Chief in the seat that Judy Wasylycia-Leis had previously held for a decade.

Most of the talk in the wake of last night's results has surrounded Lamoureux as a candidate, and I don't think there's much room for doubt that his personal profile enabled him to win a seat that otherwise might not have been in play. But it's worth noting as well that the NDP spent much of the campaign on unfriendly policy ground which may have helped to push votes out of its column.

Nearly all of the coverage I saw of Winnipeg North was framed around the concept that crime was issue #1 for the riding's residents, and that all three parties were presenting similar messages in dealing with it. But that means that the main focus was placed on a policy area where the Cons have spent years building up their brand (even if it didn't seem to help them in the by-election result), while Lamoureux was able to run against Manitoba's provincial NDP in creating a bit of space for voters to lean his way.

Of course, it may be that Lamoureux was well enough positioned to take on whatever campaign the NDP could develop. But I have to wonder if some more time spent changing the topic of conversation to health care, poverty and other more NDP-friendly issues might have made all the difference.

As for the other seats, there wasn't much news for the NDP. While the party's vote share in Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette improved somewhat, I'm not sure it can be seen as much more than the expected gain from running as the alternative in a riding that received more attention than usual. And the much-ballyhooed Con/Lib contest in Vaughan looks to have completely silenced the other parties, including the NDP.

The end result is that all of the parties have at least some success to point to - but both Winnipeg North and Vaughan saw turns for the worse in their party representation. And that figures to make it all the less likely that we'll see much accomplished in Parliament until the next general election.

On fakery

With the Libs' mock outrage machine running at full capacity, I don't expect them to pay much attention to the facts about Lloyd Axworthy's now-public views about NDP candidate Kevin Chief. But for those actually interested in whether Axworthy's praise actually reflects his personal opinion...

A Chief campaign spokesman said he had been given permission by Axworthy to report Axworthy had made a "significant" donation of more than $100 to the Chief campaign.

Axworthy noted Chief had approached him for permission to use a photo of the two of them from their time working together on the U of W's Innovative Learning Centre.

Axworthy said it was a public event and a media photo and he could not stop him.

But the photo that appeared was not that photo so Axworthy asked Chief to stop using the brochure and he complied.

However, Axworthy said it is unfair of anyone to suggest he has no connection to Chief or that he does not in fact admire him.

"He's got a very nice touch with people," he said.

So by all indications, Axworthy:
- made a publicly-disclosable donation to Chief's campaign;
- had no objection to one photograph of him with Chief being used in campaign literature, and had his concerns addressed when a different photo was used instead; and
- as a matter of fact, does have a positive personal take on Chief. Which would seem to close the case as to whether or not the Libs have a leg to stand on in pretending there's something wrong with that being pointed out.

To be fair, Axworthy is complimentary toward Lib candidate Kevin Lamoureux as well. But that doesn't affect the accuracy of his explicit and implicit praise for Chief - and the more the Libs pretend that accurate words are somehow "fake", the more it shows their desperation going into Monday's by-elections.

Across party lines

As tends to be the case, anybody looking for the most thorough and informative coverage of the ongoing by-election races will find it at the Pundits' Guide. And as part of a remarkably thorough roundup, Alice points out one noteworthy bit of cross-party support in the Winnipeg North campaign:

Also recently seen campaigning with (NDP candidate Kevin) Chief is former Liberal candidate and well-known Métis musician Ray St. Germain. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in some quarters that aboriginal people don't participate in canadian electoral politics, Chief's campaign is said to have signed up some 600 new members in that riding.

Now, I'm not sure how deep St. Germain's roots were within the Libs. But it certainly has to help Chief's cause that a prominent former candidate who was willing to challenge Pat Martin in what was then a reasonably promising target for the Libs (thanks in part to the efforts of Kevin Lamoureux himself two elections before) has joined the NDP's efforts to hold Winnipeg North. And based on the NDP's strong starting position in the riding, it's worth wondering whether the obstacles facing Lamoureux will prove insurmountable even if the race figures to be somewhat closer than the margins posted by Judy Wasylycia-Leis in recent elections.