Bill Blair wants to run for Liberals in fall election

2015/04/27 Leave a comment

Quite a coup, and interesting the public reasons for Blair choosing the Liberals over the Conservatives.

So while the Conservatives have Julian Fantino (also a former Toronto police chief) of veteran abuse fame , the Liberals have Bill Blair who, while not without controversies, talks the language of inclusion. Advantage Liberal:

The recruitment of Blair is a coup for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and a boost for the Liberals in Toronto and across the country, given the profile of the former police chief, a senior party official told the Star.

“He’s an excellent community leader. He’s got a depth of experience I don’t think you would find anywhere else in the country,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“We’re thrilled,” the official said.

In going with the Liberals, Blair rejected strong arm-twisting by the Conservatives to run with them, including personal overtures by senior cabinet ministers, a source said. Blair declined to comment, saying only that he had “respectful discussions” with a “number of people.”

“I was asked to consider a number of different options for the future,” he said. “I’ve made my choice and for me, it’s a values-based choice.”

Blair says his decision was cemented in personal discussions with Trudeau. It was influenced, too, by a major speech the Liberal leader gave in March that laid out a vision for liberty and diversity in Canada while condemning the Tories for a “corrosive” style of politics.

“It really for me articulated some of the things I really believe in and the things that I think make communities safer and more livable,” Blair said.

“In my conversations with Mr. Trudeau, I felt there was a tremendous alignment in our values,” Blair said.

In his speech, Trudeau accused the Conservatives of deliberately stoking terror worries among Canadians, warning “fear is a dangerous thing.”

Blair picked up on the theme saying that the “great threat to public safety is fear.”

“I understand the very real threat that terrorism presents to Canadian society and I think we’ve got to do everything we can to fight extremism and violence,” he said.

But he said that the communities impacted by radicalization cannot be further isolated as part of that terror fight.

“Their help is critically important. I would not in any way further alienate them or isolate them. I would want to include them in the solution,” he said.

Bill Blair wants to run for Liberals in fall election | Toronto Star.

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Chris Selley: NDP and Liberal positions on niqab during citizenship oath are pleasantly surprising

2015/02/28 Leave a comment

Chris Selley on the courage of both opposition parties in opposing the government in appealing the niqab ban at citizenship ceremonies:

It’s good news because it does seem unreasonable, as the Federal Court found, to go after veiled oaths when citizenship judges’ marching orders stipulate they should allow “the greatest possible freedom in the religious solemnization or the solemn affirmation [of the oath].” It does seem unreasonable for Mr. Harper to suggest allowing people to wear niqabs is “not how we do things here” when, like it or not, it plainly is. It does seem unreasonable to spend goodness knows how much appealing the Federal Court ruling on what seem to be highly dubious legal grounds. And it’s certainly unreasonable in a country that has enshrined religious freedom in the constitution — indeed, it’s grotesque — for the Conservatives to fundraise on the backs of someone wishing to exercise a religious freedom that the courts have thus far upheld. It’s one thing to support unveiled oaths; it’s quite another to endorse this approach to the issue.

No doubt fighting the good fight is reward enough for Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau. But the risk they’re running may not be as acute as it seems. With their seemingly popular niqabs-and-anti-terror package, Conservatives are essentially fronting a watered-down version of the Parti Québécois’ “values” campaign with a war bolted on. The values charter was popular in the polls, and so was the PQ. And when it came time for Quebecers to vote, it was no help to the PQ at all — not, it seems, because anyone changed their minds about Islam, but because their identitarian angst simply didn’t rank as a priority. Considering how unpopular the Conservatives are in Quebec on just about every other issue, that has to be an encouraging precedent for the opposition.

Chris Selley: NDP and Liberal positions on niqab during citizenship oath are pleasantly surprising

And on a less positive note, the BQ plays to xenophobic card, even less subtly than the Government:

A new ad from the Bloc Québécois is targeting NDP voters unhappy with NDP Leader Tom Mulcair’s comments Wednesday defending women’s right to wear the niqab at citizenship ceremonies.

“Should you have to hide your face to vote NDP?” the ad asks in French.

​The text is superimposed on an image of the House of Commons through the eyeholes of a black niqab, the full-face covering worn by certain Muslim women.

Bloc Québécois anti-niqab ad takes aim at NDP

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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