{"id":69409,"date":"2020-09-15T19:07:30","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T16:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/consultation-engagement-and-other-buzzwords-to-watch-this-week-2\/"},"modified":"2020-09-15T19:07:30","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T16:07:30","slug":"consultation-engagement-and-other-buzzwords-to-watch-this-week-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/consultation-engagement-and-other-buzzwords-to-watch-this-week-2\/","title":{"rendered":"#Consultation, engagement and other buzzwords to watch this week"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Consultation, engagement and other buzzwords to watch this week<\/strong>”
\nWelcome to a sneak peek of the\u00a0<\/em>Maclean\u2019s\u00a0Politics Insider\u00a0news<\/a>letter.\u00a0Sign up to get it delivered\u00a0straight to your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n

As Justin Trudeau<\/strong>‘s cabinet headed behind closed doors for a two-day retreat in Ottawa, the Prime Minister said his government had been “engaging” with opposition parties “on multiple levels” about the fall session. That claim’s wording\u2014vague with hints of specifics\u2014begged for follow-up. HuffPost’s Althia Raj asked all the parties and found, to a person,\u00a0no evidence<\/a> of consultation on any<\/em> level. The Throne Speech is next Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Blaine Higgs<\/strong> and his Progressive Conservatives won a majority government<\/strong> last night. Higgs gambled that voters wouldn’t punish him for calling a mid-pandemic election, and secured 27 seats<\/a>\u2014two more than the majority threshold. Higgs was the first N.B. premier to secure reelection since another Tory, Bernard Lord, pulled off the feat in 2003. Kevin Vickers<\/strong>, the Ottawa shooting hero<\/strong> who served as ambassador in Ireland before heading up New Brunswick’s Liberals, soundly lost his seat<\/a> to the right-of-centre People’s Alliance. He resigned as leader.<\/p>\n

Ontario reported more than 300 new COVID-19 cases<\/strong> yesterday, a number higher than any daily count since early June<\/a>. Health Minister Christine Elliott<\/strong>‘s daily announcement leaves out all the context of the virus’s spread. Ottawa’s medical officer of health, Vera Etches, recently earned praise<\/a> for describing how a single infection turned into 40<\/strong> after a cottage weekend\u2014and shut down two child-care centres. Elliott’s reporting is fuzzy on who exactly is getting infected<\/a>, but the province’s contact tracers do learn those details<\/a>. And every anecdote reminds us<\/a> that the virus is still spreading.<\/p>\n

On his first trip<\/a> to Quebec as federal Conservative leader,\u00a0Erin O’Toole<\/strong>‘s message was the same as most of his predecessors who wanted to score votes: Quebec’s autonomy matters<\/a>.\u00a0O’Toole didn’t tell Quebec Premier\u00a0Fran\u00e7ois Legault<\/strong> that a provincial law barring public sector workers from wearing religious symbols was a problem for his party. And he didn’t oppose the province app<\/a>lying its French-first Bill 101 law to federal workers\u2014including Via Rail employees.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, CBC News reports<\/a> that O’Toole’s former rival,\u00a0Peter MacKay<\/strong>, faces a campaign debt nearing $1 million<\/strong>. MacKay’s old riding association in Central Nova wants him to run again\u2014and a higher profile might help with fundraising\u2014but the longtime MP is still considering his options. He has three years to pay his outstanding debt before penalties, which include jail time, are on the table.<\/p>\n

Kenney drops into a tie for first:<\/strong>\u00a0Maybe it’s an aberration, an outlier, a fluke. Or maybe public opinion in Alberta really is shifting. A new Angus Reid Institute poll<\/strong><\/a> has Alberta’s United Conservatives tied with the provincial NDP at 38 per cent<\/strong>. Jason Kenney’s party is shedding some of its support among middle-aged supporters. Meanwhile, almost every NDP voter in the last election is still committed to that party.<\/p>\n

Small biz energy:<\/strong>\u00a0Regular readers will remember occasional references here to Save Small Business<\/strong>, a rag-tag advocacy group that argued for rent relief<\/strong> that didn’t just mean more debt for entrepreneurs. They found some success with a federal-provincial program that cut rent for thousands of businesses by 75 per cent. But now the group, “working at this off the side of our desk, late at night and on weekends while running our own businesses and raising our families,” is winding down its work. “We have run out of steam,” wrote co-founder Jon Shell, who published a final appeal<\/a> for the next phase of small-biz support.<\/p>\n

As Afghanistan’s government enters negotiations with the Taliban, Foreign Minister Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe\u00a0<\/strong>Champagne<\/strong>\u00a0says he welcomes the\u00a0<\/span>“long-awaited opportunity to pursue the elements of peace for the people of Afghanistan.” Flashback to 2006, when then-NDP leader Jack Layton<\/strong>\u2014under different circumstances, out of a desire to get Canadian troops out of a war\u2014called for similar negotiations. At the time, Tory MPs claimed<\/a> soldiers had developed a nickname for Layton\u2014Taliban Jack<\/strong>\u2014and they happily repeated the slur<\/a>\u00a0in Hansard. Layton’s position slowly<\/a> won<\/a> the test of time.<\/p>\n

The Diefenbunker was ahead of its time:<\/strong>\u00a0Your newsletter correspondent drove west to Carp, Ont., to visit a certain Cold War museum. Any trip to the bunker is a blast (not literally). Even during a pandemic, business was booming (again, not literally).<\/p>\n

I stood alone in front of the prime minister\u2019s bed<\/strong>, wearing a mask. He was nowhere to be found, his sheets taut and unused. His washroom was small, corroding in places. His desk nearby was sparsely furnished with just a small clock and a rotary phone. There was an eeriness to the space, punctuated by its isolation from the outside world. News of a burbling cross-border trade war seemed far away, as did a persistent public health threat that knew no borders. The PM\u2019s bedroom, safely cloistered from the outside, offered rare, silent refuge<\/strong>. It helped that I was standing in a subterranean chamber surrounded mostly by farmland, down the street from a village named after a river named after a sucker fish.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From Ottawa to Dubai:<\/strong> A few years back,\u00a0Anas Marwah<\/strong> was an up-and-coming politico whose satirical video series<\/a> recorded at Carleton University once tapped into the zeitgeist. Marwah was\u00a0Catherine McKenna<\/strong>‘s digital media<\/a> director in 2015. He later served a stint in the office of Liberal MP Iqra Khalid<\/strong>. He’s posed<\/a> with the PM time<\/a> and again<\/a>. The\u00a0New York Times<\/em> interviewed him<\/a> about\u00a0The Weekly Show<\/em>, which ended up serving as a gateway to YouTube stardom<\/strong>. Marwah and his family’s Arabic-language channel has netted 7.92 million subscribers<\/a>. You might have seen them in the news recently for a headline-generating gender reveal. Yes,\u00a0that<\/em> gender reveal<\/a>.<\/strong> On the side of the\u00a0Burj Khalifa. What, the Peace Tower wasn’t good enough?<\/p>\n

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The post Consultation, engagement and other buzzwords to watch this week appeared first on Macleans.ca.<\/p>\n