Wednesday Night #1810

This Wednesday  following U.S. Election Tuesday, we will welcome our good friend Helen Fotopulos and her guest, Marc Miller MP, who represents the riding of Ville-Marie — Le Sud-Ouest — Île-des-Soeurs. He is also Quebec Caucus chair and currently serves as a member of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. A fitting way to mark the November 4 first anniversary of the introduction of the Cabinet of Ministers.

This may give us an opportunity to discuss Electoral Reform in Canada, along with a number of other policy issues including pipelines and energy policy; the environment (timely as COP22 , billed as the COP of Action, 22 meets in Marakech starting on Monday); Transport Minister Marc Garneau’s newly announced transportation plans;  and this issue raised by Celine Cooper: Millennials of the precariat are finding their voice – Forget the middle class. Are Canada’s politicians prepared for the precariat? We are glad to see that she is raising  the possibility that a new term (and focus) will replace the tiresome repetitiveness of the government’s focus on “the middle class”. We believe that governments are elected to work for the benefit of all citizens.

But first, there will no doubt be passionate parsing of the extraordinary U.S. Election campaign final days and the shocking outcome, and perhaps even how to counter the disastrous effect on world markets. We originally suggested  some discussion of the winner’s policy positions, however this will be difficult given that the Associated Press reported, “Trump’s campaign has posted just seven policy proposals on his website, totaling just over 9,000 words. In contrast, there were 38 on Clinton’s ‘issues’ page, ranging from efforts to cure Alzheimer’s disease to Wall Street and criminal justice reform, and her campaign boast[ed] that it [had] released 65 policy fact sheets, totaling 112,735 words.”

If you can stand more commentary on the campaign from the media, we suggest:
– Paul Krugman’s poignant Our Unknown Country
What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous.
We thought that the nation, while far from having transcended racial prejudice and misogyny, had become vastly more open and tolerant over time.
We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.

– The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland’s caustic Who is to blame for this awful US election?
Fox News? The four horsemen of the Republican apocalypse? The FBI? Whatever the outcome, historians will judge harshly those who did not stop Trump when they could

– Andrew Coyne’s fine column, U.S. presidential election headed for the second-worst possible conclusion of November 4 – one statement jumped out at us “for all of these testaments to his unfitness for office — and this summary barely scratches the surface — he has paid no price.”

A lighter note from FiveThirtyEight: The Perfect Presidential Stump Speech
We asked former Republican speechwriter Barton Swaim and Democratic speechwriter Jeffrey Nussbaum to write a totally pandering bipartisan stump speech for an imaginary presidential candidate — one who espouses only positions that a majority of voters agree with. Here’s the speech they wrote, including notes to explain their phrasing, behind-the-scenes tips on appealing to voters and the data they used to decide which positions to take (The notes are a delight!)

A new offering from Annabel Soutar will be at Centaur from Nov. 8 to Dec. 4 – sounds as though it should not be missed – also a highly educational and great family entertainment.
The Watershed has its moment at the Centaur For many Wednesday Nighters, who knew him, an added attraction is “Another family member portrayed on stage is Soutar’s father, Ian, who died this year (the published script is dedicated to him). An investment manager with a distinctly conservative outlook, he provides a counterweight to Soutar’s more leftish views during several dialectical discussions.”

Alan Hustak is a friend and admirer of former Speaker and now candidate for the Leadership of the Conservative Party Andrew Scheer . It has something to do with their shared Saskatchewan roots. Alan invites all to join Conservative McGill  on Monday evening to welcome Andrew Scheer to Montreal to discuss his leadership campaign. Conservative McGill is hosting the event at Chez Alexandre. (2nd floor) in conjunction with Conservative Concordia, John Abbott College Conservatives, and Manning On Campus – McGill University.