Ready, set, wait for Trudeau Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Justin Trudeau didn't call an election on Sunday, as some expected him to do, but, as Brian Lilley points out in a Toronto Sun column, the question now seems to be when, not if. The never-ending speculation of an election call isn’t happening in a vacuum, it isn’t sprouting from the fevered minds of journalists and pundits, it’s being fed by actions mostly coming from the Trudeau government. Beyond the non-stop spending announcements and cross-country travel, there are other tells that the Trudeau Liberals want to seek another majority government. Liberal staffers were told to take vacation time in July and be back in Ottawa for the start of August, while Liberal candidates have been told to rent office space for the next two months. CTV's Glen McGregor speculated on Twitter that we might see a longer-than-expected campaign, with the call coming later this week, for an election day of Sept. 27. Whenever the election happens, Dr. Theresa Tam says it can be conducted safely, Global reports. “There’s definitely ways to vote safely,” Tam said during a pandemic briefing Thursday. “Certainly, if there’s a mail-in option, people can take advantage of that. I think it’s great to have an option but in-person voting can be done safely.” Trudeau can expect criticism from opposition leaders, all of whom have urged him to hold off, if cases go up during a campaign. In Ontario on Sunday, the line was moving the wrong way. And when there's an election, you can be sure there will be public opinion polls. Philippe J. Fournier, writing in Maclean's, has a fascinating statistical analysis of the the “House Effect” of Canadian polling firms, which you might want to keep at hand when the polls start dropping. https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/federal-election-2021-know-your-pollsters/ Also in Maclean's, Paul Wells writes about an upcoming economic summit organized by Anne McLellan and Lisa Raitt, finding in the announcement a "sense that, whatever it is that preoccupies the Trudeau government or would preoccupy any currently imaginable Conservative alternative, it isn’t long-term prosperity or a smoothly-functioning economy." Wells notes that Canadians, including many Liberal voters, have a mixed view of Trudeau's record. Trudeau’s favourable impression is barely higher among Liberal voters—78 per cent—than O’Toole’s among Conservative voters, at 75 per cent. In contrast, 92 per cent of people who say they’ll vote NDP have a favourable impression of Singh. Even more striking, the expectation that Trudeau would be a good PM is the same among Liberals supporters as the expectation that O’Toole would be a good PM among Conservative supporters. Both are at 68 per cent. Among NDP supporters, 78 per cent think Singh would be a good PM. So a third of the people who are planning to vote Liberal don’t agree with the proposition that Trudeau would be a good prime minister, after six years of watching him be Prime Minister. Farewell to Davis: Widely respected former Ontario premier Bill Davis has died at his Brampton home as the age of 92. The Star has an obit. Seldom in Canada — perhaps anywhere in the world — has a political leader described his formula for success in such succinct and self-effacing terms as Davis once did. “Bland works,” he told a journalist who inquired why he ran so boring a government. For Bill Davis, who retired from electoral politics in 1985, bland certainly did. He was an unstinting booster of his Brampton hometown, a peerless fan of the Toronto Argonauts, father of Ontario’s community college system, a key figure in Canada’s constitutional repatriation, unrivalled master of oratorical circumlocution and — most of all — a devoted family man. “What made Mr. Davis special was his inbred decency,” his former press secretary Joan Walters told the Star. “He was an immensely modest man tied to the tenets of small-town Ontario, the love of God, country and the Queen.” Welcome back, Americans: As of midnight last night, vaccinated Americans will again be allowed on Canadian soil, CP reports. Denis Vinette, of the Canada Border Services Agency, expects confusion if Americans are anything like Canadians, who often showed up at the border without having met the vaccination requirement: "We had a lot of individuals who didn't have a full understanding of what applies and what does not apply. I expect the same here." There may be confusion, but there likely won't be work stoppages, because, as CBC reports, border guards reached a deal with the government, averting the possibility of a strike, on Friday. Businesses want vax passports: The Canadian Chamber of Commerce says vaccine passports or digital vaccination certificates would help to prevent lockdowns, Chamber president Perrin Beatty told CP: "The private sector, like Canadians as a whole, is diverse — but one thing in which the private sector is very much united is that we can't afford to go into more across-the-board lockdowns." Quebec announced last week that it would require Quebecers as of September to show proof of vaccination in order to access non-essential services but Doug Ford and Jason Kenney have rejected the idea. The church is rich: A Globe and Mail investigation finds that the Canadian Catholic church, which has failed to live up to its financial commitments in a residential school settlement, has billions of dollars. The Catholic Church’s share of a national residential schools settlement reached in 2006, meant to go toward healing and reconciliation efforts, amounted to $29-million in cash, $25-million in church in-kind services, and $25-million from a fundraising campaign. That campaign raised just $3.7-million. The Globe also has an interesting exit interview with Jody Wilson-Raybould, in which she discusses her forthcoming book — "Indian" in the Cabinet — which will be critical of Trudeau and which will likely hit stores during an election campaign: And is it going to be explosive, in your view?
[Laughs] I don’t know about explosive but I imagine it will raise some eyebrows. As the title implies, it’s telling the truth about my experience and what I learned from my experience and provides some pathways forward based on that experience and how we can improve our democracy from an insider’s perspective. So I hope it’s interesting for people. — Stephen Maher | 