EP 15 AUDIO ONLY

The podcast host discusses various controversies in provincial politics across Canada, including the pronoun controversy in Saskatchewan, Alberta's attempt to opt out of the Canada Pension Plan, and the Greenbelt legislation and comments made by a NDP MPP in Ontario. The guest speaker, Richard Brennan, comments on how the controversy surrounding the MPP has shifted the focus away from the government's issues with the Greenbelt and onto her pro-Palestinian views. He also criticizes her refusal to retract her statements and the impact it has had on her party. The host emphasizes the importance of party leaders enforcing guidelines and maintaining party identity. welcome to the bill kelly podcast critical discussions in critical times here's your host bill kelly welcome to another edition of the bill kelly podcast critical discussions for critical times i'm your host bill kelly good to have you with us today we're going to spend some time on provincial politics i know there's so many other things going on on a global basis and uh... and even well federally of course with the prime minister and is uh... head-butting with the Pierre Polyev and others but some interesting things happening i mean right across the country of course you've got saskatchewan premier scott mole with his uh... what's become known as the pronoun controversy that legislation uh... you've got uh... danielle smith in alberta right now who's trying to opt out of the canada pension plan and that's causing all sorts of grief and uh... here in ontario well premier doug ford's got his own set of problems uh... one of course being the greenbelt legislation and the ongoing investigation and now we find out an RCMP investigation into that uh... and secondarily and some would suggest that maybe the primarily uh... the comments of uh... nbp mpp sarah jama about what was going on with gaza and the israelis and uh... the palestinians uh... some rather controversial comments there too and the way that the government has responded to it uh... is rather unusual joining us to talk about all this is a good friend richard brennan the badger uh... who of course covered queens park and uh... and uh... parliament hill for so many years for the toronto star uh... badger good to have it with us today uh... we've we've talked about some of the controversy some of the crazy things that have gone on uh... this is bizarre what's happening in ontario right now uh... the greenbelt legislation uh... that the government introduced to try to backtrack i guess and and cover their tracks uh... is in itself controversial because of uh... the way it was worded in the intent of looking at the sarah jama in just a couple seconds but what's your read on what you've seen over the last couple of days for the premier well bill i don't know if we cannot get right into sarah jama because she's the person who has changed the channel yeah for the government uh... they uh... there's a police and rcmp investigation sure they brought they brought in the legislation saying oh well we won't touch the greenbelt well we've heard that before uh... but all along comes a backbench MPP, NDP MPP who puts out a post on ex former twitter and she says that and she's known for her pro-palestinian position well that's that's fine okay so be it but she puts out a post that says says how terrible it has been for the palestinian people and this is the day day after that the uh... Hamas has attacked israel she doesn't even mention that in her post well of course this gives the conservative party now she's a convenient foil for the conservative party they change the channel immediately how dare sarah jama do this and you know she should be kicked out of caucus she called for stiles the leader to kick her out of caucus and all of a sudden we're not talking about the green belt anymore we're talking about sarah jama and her pro-palestinian views quite frankly who cares about her pro-palestinian views uh... this isn't ottawa this isn't foreign affairs this is the provincial government so all of a sudden it it's all about her and not about what we should be talking about and that's the government's attempt to feather the nest of developers and give basically turnover more than eight billion probably ten billion dollars worth of land for them to develop but no she came along and did that and rightly i can't blame ford it's a good politically for him for seizing on this and look what's happened you know instead of the boom boom boom every day the government being hammered over a green belt it's now about the ndp trying to defend sarah jama's views it's bizarre it really is and i know that it's okay to say well wait a second she might have a point that's that's not the point uh... her views on this i i'm not going to say are irrelevant but i mean uh... people in the hamilton area know sarah jama for quite some time she is uh... an activist as i guess is maybe one way to put it uh... she's a very active she's anti-police anti-government anti all sorts of things and and that's that's a track record and and okay fine notwithstanding all of that she got the ndp nomination for hamilton center when andrea horvath resigned and she won the by-election and uh... some friends of ours who covered that suggested that while she's ndp anybody who was put the ndp on their name was going to get elected in the hamilton center that's all they they elected in that particular part of town so she's got the position she's already uh... made some controversial remarks when she first uh... was was elected and and took her seat in the long-term legislature uh... and and there was a bit of a murmur of of outrage at that time but you're absolutely right this is a classic situation here of doug ford and the conservatives trying to change the channel and this is a gift to ford i mean you know he was going down the toilet in the in the approval ratings here in the province because of the green belt and with each uh... subsequent uh... you know report that came up from the auditor general from the ethics commissioner yada yada yada this guy screwed up and they could have done something wrong and the cherry on top was when the rcfp said we're going to investigate now the possibility of criminal charges i don't know if it could get any worse for doug ford and then all of a sudden he says look over here look what she's doing this is outrageous and have you noticed that in the last five days since he's doing this his popularity is back up again in other words people have forgotten about the green belt and they shouldn't how they could is beyond me the man and his government is facing a criminal investigation that god knows where it will go i'm not saying one way or the other but the government is under investigation you know i mean that alone should keep that on the front burner everyday for the opposition they should just be hammering that but no sarajama comes along she doesn't she's not retracted that post she actually pinned it so it's right up in her uh... site that that post she's basically thumbing her nose at certainly doug ford but not only that she's the leader of her own party does sarajama think for one minute if she ran for as an independent that she would have won that riding she ran under the nbp banner and was elected under such and now she's not listening she's not listening to her own leader stiles sort of said you know you've got twenty four hours to take that down which she didn't or you're gone and she also said she wanted to issue an apology well she did quote unquote apologize uh... she did not apologize for what she said she just said i apologize if you're offended by it well too bad so sad that's a politician's apology right? it's never been an apology yeah bill i'm sorry if i've offended you well what does that mean? the thing is that she she's a uh... you know she might be an activist and god bless her for that but if she wanted to get into foreign policy and stuff like that she should have ran federally but no she brings this baggage along with her to the provincial legislature and now it's thrown her whole party into disarray they're having to apologize for her they don't know what to do with her she suddenly disappeared her constituency office isn't open it's a mess and it for no good reason she should have she should have taken it down and listened to her leader because that's the way you know that it goes provincially another way in ontario we look after health care education and social programs we don't do foreign affairs and that's what she's trying to blend the two and now she stepped right into it and just handed doug ford and his government a gift i mean wrapped with a ribbon there's a couple things happening here and from the political standpoint and again uh... as i mentioned a couple minutes ago i don't want to conflate these two sarah jammer's opinion on this is another issue and and you know and look at if you're the MPP from you know breakneck alberta and you've got somebody go ahead have your own opinions uh... but you know if you're in a provincial legislature as you say there are some guidelines and guardrails and it's really up to the party leader to enforce those and you've been around politics for forever and a day and you've seen this happen uh... you know when when some of the people from the extreme right started to get a little mouthy about some of the views uh... about uh... re-opening the abortion debate for instance and things of this nature steven harper shut them down and said think what you want but i'm the captain here and we're not going to have that discussion in our caucus and we're certainly not going to have it in parliament uh... it's happened with other leaders too i mean you were you remember a long time ago when john nunziata started speaking out against john cretchend uh... he was gone boom you're out of the party buddy uh... when garth turner uh... got elected under the harper government and started being critical of some of the policies as as garth told me he says i went to work the next day and he says my office was down beside the boiler room in the basement uh... you know and i guess what they're looking for from mara stiles here is are you running this party or is she i mean are you just going to have a bunch of free thinkers or do you have guidelines here in other words that are going to stay within the identity of the mvp and i'm not so sure who's calling the shots there now well uh... it's you know it's too bad that stiles didn't didn't pull the plug on her because i don't think this will be the last we hear of sarah johnson she is an activist and it's going to cause her party no end of grief quite frankly if if i'd been if i'd been stiles i would have seen the opportunity to get rid of a loose cannon and you know send her off into independent oblivion but no they stuck by her and you know you gotta say she's stuck sticking by her team this isn't the end that's just i'm telling you this is not the end of the grief that she's going to cause that party for no good reason and she brought the spotlight is on her and her party instead of across the aisle at the conservative party tried to pull a fast one and got caught a couple of things about this too and i wanted you to comment about this because uh... it's a majority government apparently they're going to introduce legislation to have her censured which essentially means that she's not going to be recognized by the speaker during question period and things of this nature and she won't be able to introduce legislation which i don't think she was ever going to anyway and i don't know that she was ever going to speak during question period anyway so it's really it's it's much to do about nothing it's a nothing burger and it's going to pass because they have a majority and ford's going to say okay you know we're going to get her censored nothing big deal it's immaterial uh... but what it's done is it gives them more oxygen to start talking about this as opposed to this very controversial piece of legislation that uh... that paul calandria uh... i think he's the minister this week i mean they keep firing them because of some of the stuff that's going on here uh... but about the greenbelt because remember they said okay yeah we made a mistake which was quite an above face but i mean you know they're reading the tea leaves in the public opinion but the legislation that they've introduced here basically says okay we're not going to do this much anymore but the more important part is is they're not liable to this in other words these developers that are going to lose a ton of money can't go after the government and they can't be charged i mean this is basically uh... putting up a wall around this and say doug ford can't be charged and none of these guys are going to be charged can you write legislation like that that says that that we're above the law now and we're above ethics well it's a presidential pardon essentially sorry for all the things you did but you don't have to worry about it we'll look after you and don't come after us don't come after us and and and you know greasing you know the skids of developed in that particular protected area this should again the oxygen bill should be with that not sarah jama who's like i say a backbench MPP that other than hamilton and now everybody knows about her she's caused she's caused their party no end of grief for no particular reason on a subject that she had no business really even stepping into you know with a provincial party should look to the federal party and singh took a particular position that's what the position should have been provincially that's the way the NDP works it's it's exasperating if I was in the NDP I would just be completely exasperated and I know some of them wanted her gone but it didn't happen so this is going to you know this legislation is going to be passed you know telling her she can't do anything basically can't do her job and there's going to be more stories about that it's going to go on and on and on the channel has been changed now the effort is to changing it back and it's not going to be easy well especially because I think a lot of people that were looking for some leadership from Mara Stiles here don't see that she's basically just kind of backed off and said you know I don't want to get my hands dirty on this uh... the liberals are still waiting to elect a leader uh... that's not going to happen until uh... what another five six weeks I guess when they finally get around to doing something like that so where where is the quote-unquote opposition in Queen's Park right now uh... where are the checks and balances against the Ford government you know you gotta keep in mind that when you look at this whole thing and all these investigations that have gone on about the initial green belt decision that Ford said okay I'm going to hand this over to the developers it wasn't the opposition that uncovered that it was the media uh... it was the hard work by the Toronto Star, Global News and the Narwhals, some of the folks that are hanging around Queen's Park all the time that they're the ones that dug all this stuff up uh... the opposition were caught flat-footed on here they didn't know anything about it this only works whether it's federal government, provincial government it only works if there's a strong opposition and I don't mean to oppose everything but I mean to analyze the legislation that's coming forward and to talk about the ramifications of it and those guys, the liberals and the NDP were asleep at the wheel during this whole thing for her credit though, I've got to give some credit to Stout it was them who asked for the uh... Auditor General to investigate this but that was after the reporting came out from the Star, that was Rob Benzie and a couple of other ones oh no, no I agree with you, at least they read it and listened to it and paid attention to it and she was the one that asked for it and got it and we saw the report thereof so she got a lot of brownie points for doing that but it's all gone up in smoke now we've got basically a hapless opposition that's both liberal and NDP with a government that loves to bully people that's that's the other thing I want, you know, this, what Sarah Jammer did give the, give Ford an opportunity to do what he does best and that's bully people and that's what he's doing here with her, you know, censorship bill, I mean that it's, that's classic, classic Ford but all the good things that NDP did in terms of digging up more and getting the Auditor General in there to dig out and give a great report in terms of, you know, detailed report about the malfeasance, if you will, of what went on there and now it's all for naught the only thing that's good, you know, the only thing that's going to bring this really back on the table, Bill is the NDP or not NDP, RCMP, I should say, RCMP investigation that's what's going to bring this all back again You know, we've seen this, you covered it before, of course, that was the gas plant scandal under the McGinty government which was passed on, and there were charges laid and heads rolled as a result of that, I don't think anybody did jail time, but I mean it did get pretty ugly as that thing rolled on, do you see it going to that extent with this from what we know so far anyway? Well, I think this, you know, nobody liked, we, Toronto Star reported again and again and again on the gas plant, believe me, we went after that hard but that was a billion dollar boondoggle, Bill which is horrible in itself but we're looking at something that was probably upwards of ten billion dollars to actually aid and abet people who give money to the conservative party I don't think it gets much worse than that And then they did benefit from that, I mean, I know some of the supporters of the Ford government are simply saying, well, he didn't really benefit, so what's the big deal here? The party did These guys handed out huge checks and as a result as we started seeing some of the investigation, and Bonnie Lissick's report, the Auditor General's report at the time basically said they had a party you know, it was, I guess, for his daughter's wedding, and basically everybody that went there and gave a check got it and said, okay, what piece of land do you want? It was like a giveaway, basically and, you know, that was your entry in there, how big a check are you going to give? I mean, that's the worst element of politics that we could ever see and you'd like to think, I don't care what your political affiliation is that's not how government runs, well, that's how he's been doing things since he got into office, whether it was Ron Taverner or whether it was a number of other things that he's tried to do, it's basically, okay, I got the big job now, guys, who wants what? And that's not the way you're supposed to govern and McGinney got his knuckles slapped for that and certainly Ford's going to right now we don't know how long that's going to take, I mean, obviously they're going to come back with some sort of a report don't know if there's going to be charges laid, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves but what I do want to ask you and I know we're still at least more than two years away from the next provincial election, more than that, I guess does this signify that Doug Ford's, this is going to be his last term in office? Is he going to step aside after this? He's pissed off the people that's financed him that financed his run to get there he's pissed off just about every municipality now by saying, you can't do this, I'm shrinking the size of your council you guys can't have regional government anymore and by the way, I'm extending the urban boundaries so those developers can go and build there even if it's not in the Greenbelt you know, Hamilton, you can't tell people where you're going to build, we're going to do it for you he's made a lot of enemies He has, but when you've got a weak opposition, and we're certainly seeing it now God knows, he might, like you said, he's got a whole new breath, a lung full of oxygen, quite frankly, with what's going on and maybe this is, you know, put more wind in his sails, I don't know I kind of thought that he might pull the plug but right now, like you said, his stock's going up, I saw that and I just scratched my head and I said, what do you have to do before the public will you know, stand up and say, enough's enough I mean, all my years, I've never seen anything that you know, I don't want to border on corruption, but it certainly had all the appearance of corruption in my career, I've never seen it so in your face as this Greenbelt situation was like, he thought, he really thought he could drive that through and not pay for it because he's Doug Ford and I can do what I want well, as he's doing with the highways, the two highway projects too that he's apparently still bound and bent that he wants to go forward on it's all about strong opposition and by and large, Badger, people get that, don't they? I mean, you know, they did not like the way that he handled COVID he was down to the dumps, he had one of the lowest approval ratings of any premier in Ontario for the last 100 years during COVID, and everybody thought, well, he's done for the next election but I guess they looked around at the alternatives that was Stephen Del Duca and Andrew Horvath, and they said, no, sorry at least that's the devil we know, and he got reelected with an even larger majority until somebody stands up and says, I'm going to take the reins here I've got some solutions, and I don't see that happening I don't know who the Liberal leader is going to be, it seems to me it may be Bonnie Crombie, but you know, it'd be a fool's game to try to make that prediction now because of the way those things work, but is there going to be any alternative to an Ontario voter who says, I've had enough of this kind of crap, I want something else there aren't too many options here Well, Bonnie Crombie, I think, I think Bonnie Crombie will be the next leader of that party I don't think, and what she has going for her, she gets under his skin for some reason and that's great for an opposition leader So I'd be flabbergasted if she doesn't win She's so far ahead of the other, what, two have already pulled out and supported her and she's far ahead in support of the remaining candidates You mentioned Andrea Horvath, I think Andrea would have kicked her out You know, I think Stiles made a, I'm talking about Sarah Johnston I think she would have booted her And Stiles made a huge mistake by not, because she hasn't retracted it Yeah, she gave a half-hearted apology, you know, that's worth about a buck fifty or a coffee at Tim Hortons But she hasn't retracted it In fact, she stuck it up and said, I'm keeping this up, my, you know, my post and whether you like it or not And she knows, she has to know the impact and the negative impact she's doing, you know, having on her party But it seems to me that, you know, that, you know, very typical of how she's acted in the past that she really doesn't give a darn except about her, anything about her views Well, it's not over, and as you say, if this legislation is going to be introduced in Queens Park I guess there'll be some debate on that, as I say, we already know it's going to pass because they have a majority government But how do the opposition leaders respond to this? I mean, this is really where you get to show what you got when it comes to leadership or potential leadership right now And you're right, I mean, she got some good marks for being relentless about the Green Belt in the legislature during question period, and scored some pretty good points as far as that was concerned But you got to wonder about, you know, can you handle your own caucus, that's really what it comes down to And this is going to happen to everybody, you know, every prime minister, every premier, just about every province There's always going to be some people that are going to try to ruffle people's feathers and say something outrageous But as was put in the proper context, these comments that the JAMA made about what's happening The tragedy that's going on in Gaza these days, was one thing, but I mean, this is not the first time She's only been in office a few months, and she's already got her knuckles wrapped for some comments she made that were basically calling police Nazis, the way that they handled demonstrators and the way that they handled people with differing opinions, and she was asked to apologize for that And again, she issued the nothing apology, you know, well, sorry if you're offended by that And those are her views, and that's fine, but if you're going to be in public life and especially if you're going to be in a party situation, in other words, that's the team There have to be some guardrails, and there have to be some rules, and if you don't want to play by the rules that your leader sets, then you probably shouldn't be in that party Well, Bill, I've got something here, the Toronto Sun columnist dug this up A deleted poster of Sarah JAMA's, this is typical of the outrageous things she has said in the past Police in Ontario have a record of arbitrarily killing babies Black, indigenous, racialized, disabled civilians, brackets, many of whom are Muslims and those who are in crisis, that's what she's posted in the past It's completely crazy, completely outrageous, and that's what she's brought with her to the legislature Well, as far as I'm concerned, and I think a lot of Ontarians are concerned This is on Mark Stiles right now, Sarah JAMA is Sarah JAMA and I don't anticipate she's going to change and it's up to the NDP right now, what do you want to do about this? Is that going to be the face of your provincial party? Is that the attitude that you want people to have? Is that the picture of what the NDP in Ontario stands for these days? And I don't know that she can answer that truthfully and until she can do that and stand up to her own caucus you've got to ask yourself, does she really have what it takes to be the leader of a party? I mean, there's some pretty difficult times coming up and we already saw what kind of a leader Doug Ford is and he's done some good things, as we've said, I'm not trying to, you know, candy coat this but, you know, he brought labour into the NPC party, never thought we'd see that in our lifetimes but he did it by writing big checks and promising jobs and that's always a good way to get attention and that's all well and good but look at the way that he's actually handling government and the worst scenario, from all the way back to movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington whenever you see a movie about political corruption invariably it's about some politician who takes advantage of their position to benefit himself or his buddies and we always look at that and say, that's terrible well it's happening right in front of us and five days after it's not on the front page of the newspaper anymore all of a sudden people seem to have forgotten and his popularity is right back up where it was six months ago well it means, you know, it's often been the case it happened many years ago when the liberals won in New Brunswick and they won everything but one seat or something like that so the media became the official opposition and that's what's happening now it's the media that's digging up things and telling listeners and readers what's going on there and the inside story like you said, it was the media, newspapers and others that revealed what was going on in the green belt so it'll come back to that again the public will look to the media hopefully to see what's going on to understand what's happening at Queen's Park because certainly the opposition is not doing its job Mark Stiles will certainly be under question now because she didn't deal with Sarajama so that's going, you know, they could let's put it this way Bill if she had dealt with her and kept her boot on the throat of the conservative government she might have had a chance, Bill, the next election yep, but you've got to clean up your own backyard before you start going after it I would say she's lost that opportunity I know it's still a long ways off but I think this has really hurt her position, quite frankly and I've got to put a wrap on this but it's getting more and more difficult for people in the media like the Star and the Narwhal and others to do this because of the cutbacks in the media but that's a topic for another day I'd love to sit down with you and we'll get into that we will in a future podcast Richard, as always, thanks so much for this always a pleasure to have you on the show OK, Bill, thanks again Richard Brennan, of course, who covered Queen's Park and the federal scene we're going to talk about that in just a little while too here on the Bill Kelly Podcast and that's it for this edition of the Bill Kelly Podcast thanks for listening and by the way, thanks for subscribing too as always, we welcome your comments and your suggestions you can reach us on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Axe if you prefer Instagram, or you can reach us at This Is Bill Kelly and subscribe to the sub stack too and we'll get some information out to you on a daily basis until next time, I'm Bill Kelly take care this podcast was brought to you by Rebecca Wissons and her team at Wissons Law Rebecca Wissons is a 20-time winner of the Hamilton Reader's Choice Awards for their exceptional client care and legal practice specializing in personal injury car accidents, accidental falls and Wilson estates now if you or a loved one have been seriously injured or if you want to make sure that your family is taken care of for the future with the will and powers of attorney call Rebecca Wissons 905-522-1102 for a free consultation when life happens you can rely on Rebecca Wissons and trust me, Rebecca is my wife I don't know what I'd do without her that's Wissons Law 905-522-1102 for a free consultation subscribe to my sub stack for timely news updates and commentary straight to your inbox let's keep the conversation going I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's episode let me know what you think we should be talking about next by contacting me through my website at www.billkelly.co thanks for tuning in this is Bill Kelly take care