Federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair makes a speech during the 2016 NDP Federal Convention in Edmonton on Sunday, April 10, 2016.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
POLITICS BRIEFING
By Chris Hannay (@channay) and Rob Gilroy (@rgilroy)
The Globe Politics newsletter is back. We're pleased to include a roundup of news and opinion on U.S. politics, through until this year's election in November. As always, let us know what you think of the newsletter. Sign up here to get it by e-mail each morning.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW IN OTTAWA
> Another Alberta judge is facing a review over how he handled a sex-assault case.
> Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould charged expenses to the government on a day she travelled to Toronto for a Liberal fundraiser, CTV reports.
> Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, was in Ottawa yesterday, and said any moves to cool housing markets in Canada should be directed at Toronto and Vancouver.
> Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is urging Justin Trudeau to get the Energy East pipeline approved.
> "There's not a morning I don't wake up and wish I was a police officer," says former Ottawa police chief Vern White, who has sat as a senator for four years. He was profiled in iPolitics.
> Peter MacKay, who has bowed out of the Conservative leadership race, says the candidates who are left should watch out for being "offensive" and hurting the party's electoral chances in the future.
> And in her second report of 2016, federal conflict-of-interest watchdog Mary Dawson concluded that CRTC commissioner Linda Vennard broke ethics rules by accepting chocolate and flowers from a radio station on her birthday. Ms. Vennard thought the gifts were worth $50 or $60, but in fact they cost $123.90.
NEW DEMOCRATS PONDER THE FUTURE
By Gloria Galloway
Tom Mulcair could find himself fighting with his caucus for the right to stay on as interim leader when New Democrat MPs meet today in Montreal to prepare for the fall sitting of Parliament.
Mr. Mulcair, who failed to win the support of a majority of party members at a meeting last April, has said in recent statements that he will captain the NDP until his successor is chosen in the fall of 2017. That affirmation was made necessary after news stories suggested his own MPs intended to dump him.
The depth of the discontent is difficult to measure because Mr. Mulcair's detractors have been unwilling to speak publicly. But support for the NDP is at its lowest point in more than a decade and Mr. Mulcair bears much of the blame for the resounding defeat the party suffered in the 2015 election – a campaign that began as a three-way race.
"Mulcair is well regarded but is not seen as prime ministerial material and his brand is near a 12-month low right now compared to where he was near the election," says pollster Nik Nanos of Nanos Research.
On the other hand, said Mr. Nanos, "I'm not sure if it really makes a difference who the interim leader is of the New Democrats because I think, for many Canadians, they're not going to tune into either the New Democrats or the Conservatives until they actually have a leader."
But the New Democrats, understandably, do not want to lie dormant at the bottom of the polls.
"I think people want to talk about, Ok, let's identify where the shortfalls are, let's identify what's not happening and what needs to happen, and develop a plan to move forward," said NDP caucus chair Charlie Angus. "I am hearing from caucus members across the country who are saying they are worried about just being in a holding pattern."
Mr. Mulcair faced a previous caucus uprising in April when some of his MPs questioned why he should stay on as interim leader after being rejected resoundingly by the rank-and-file. At a closed-door meeting, he convinced a majority of his caucus that he should be allowed to stay.
A month later, the party's national council decreed that the next leadership convention would not be held for a year and a half. Some New Democrat MPs are now saying quietly they would not have supported his continued leadership had they known how long it would take to elect a successor.
There have also been complaints that Mr. Mulcair took too much time off during the summer.
And, although he is recognized as an excellent questioner in the House of Commons, some New Democrats say what is needed is someone to start the arduous process of rebuilding the party in church basements and legion halls – and they are not certain that Mr. Mulcair is the man for the job.
Mr. Angus is careful when choosing his words, maintaining neutral on the question of whether Mr. Mulcair's time as leader has run its course. But he acknowledges that a serious discussion is about to take place.
"The role that the interim leader plays, that's something that will happen within the caucus dynamic with Tom," he said, "with everyone figuring out what do the next three months, what does the next six months and the next year look like. That is a conversation for the caucus to have …"
U.S. ELECTION 2016
> The numbers game: Former Ontario premier Bob Rae knows a thing or two about not trusting polls seven weeks before an election. In the summer of 1990, "the first overnight polling results were so bad my advisers wouldn't tell me what they were .... After four weeks, they showed us in the lead." Today in The Globe, he writes that "Hillary Clinton's election is not inevitable, and neither is Donald Trump's."
> Trump's immunity: The Globe's John Ibbitson says that while the world focuses on Hillary Clinton's health, Donald Trump's accusations are so unmoored from the truth that few bother to fact check any more. The Republican leader is so outrageous, he can no longer outrage.
> Trump's charity: At Vox.com, Matthew Yglesias looks at the workings of the Trump Foundation and then broadens it into a smart take at the difference in media coverage between it and the Clinton Foundation. And Brian Beutler in The New Republic with his take on the U.S. media's problem with "false balance" coverage. He says it's all about the press's self-interest.
> "Just because you're paranoid…": Also at Vox, Dave Robert digs into some research to come up with some reasons why conspiracy theories tend to fester on the right side of the political spectrum.
> Deplorable comments: After GOP vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence refused to call white supremacist David Duke "deplorable", some pundits jokingly suggested that Hillary Clinton's ill-advised comment last week was really just a trap set for the Trump campaign. In The Washington Post, Greg Sargent says the comment has reignited a closer look at Trump's racist campaign – which will clearly benefit Clinton.
> On the up: At Business Insider, Brett LoGiurato notes that President Barack Obama's approval rating – at 58 per cent – is at its highest in years, which could spell trouble for Donald Trump.
> "A grey swan": Ross Douthat in The New York Times says "a constant drippage of stuff that makes both Clinton and the larger elite seem clueless" is Donald Trump's path to a win in the Electoral College.
WHAT EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT
Campbell Clark (Globe and Mail): "Peter MacKay's decision to not run marks the end of the name-recognition portion of the Conservative leadership race. Now it's time for the candidates you couldn't pick out of a police lineup. But maybe, just maybe, these unknown names can actually help the Conservative Party find its post-Stephen Harper identity." (for subscribers)
Lawrence Martin (Globe and Mail): "In their leadership contest, the Conservatives fear a fracturing – a rekindling of the tug of war between old Tories and Reformers. The odds of this have shot up courtesy of Kellie Leitch's push for values-testing for immigrants. Interim party leader Rona Ambrose quickly repudiated her position, then backed off a bit as an opinion poll showed the idea had substantial backing. There isn't what one observer termed a 'Trump Rump' among our Conservatives."
Colin Robertson (Globe and Mail): "The 9/11 effect has changed how Americans view the world and manage their borders. There is still too much emphasis on enforcement and not enough on expediting legitimate travel. If we have learned anything from 9/11 it is that the answer is not more guns, guards and gates but rather smart screening and risk management." (for subscribers)
Robyn Urback (National Post): "If, as [Conservative leadership candidate Tony] Clement suggests, we start incarcerating those people if we can't find the resources for constant monitoring, Canada would essentially be in the business of jailing individuals who haven't committed a crime – who haven't even planned to commit a crime – until such time as whatever belief we had in their potential danger magically dissipates. That is, in a word, bananas: we don't round people up and throw them behind bars for offences we think they might do, and no conservative who purports to stand for freedom and justice could possibly stand behind such a notion."
Megan Dias (Ottawa Citizen): "Countries that have changed their electoral system in the past usually do so because there was some major problem with the functioning of their democracy. A new electoral system was presented as the best solution to that problem. It has not been made clear what problem, exactly, Canada is trying to solve."