Let’s face it, it’s tough to be a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. The team hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967; that’s well over half a century ago. It’s a tough statistic for one of the most storied teams in NHL history, winners of 12 Cups over the years.

This spring the Leafs had a limping performance against last year’s Stanley-Cup champions, the Florida Panthers.

Every year Leaf fans meet other fans wearing the characteristic blue cap with the white maple leaf logo, and they say things like: “This has got to be our year.’ 

And then, it isn’t. This year, again, it wasn’t.

Naming a cabinet and running a freshly elected government is not as easy as the game those of us of a certain age used to play as kids called, Pick-Up Sticks. Every slim stick one moved, the chances were good that you would disturb another, and if you are not careful the whole thing can come crashing down.

Several time now, Prime Minister Carney has made it a top priority to visit Mr. Trump, or in his very first week in the big chair, to visit with European leaders, and then do more of that following the death of  much-loved Pope Francis and the naming of Pope Leo.
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All that is well and good, but the country needs some old-fashioned bread and butter politics just now. For instance, the PM needs to ensure a good, personalized mandate letter is crafted for each minister, not just a carbon copy (remember that one?) with clear priorities for each minister. The personal touch matters in politics: “Hello Joe, sorry about the death of your Mum.”

Then there are the bruised egos of those who didn’t make it into the PM’s cabinet, or in some cases, were not invited back into cabinet after a caretaker role during the election campaign. One of the more outspoken ministers dropped was Nat Erskine-Smith, who was named to the housing portfolio late in the Justin Trudeau era. Erskine-Smith is a young, energetic MP representing the Beaches riding in Toronto. He said he couldn’t help but feel “disrespected” after receiving the call from PM Carney that he is being dropped from cabinet. It’s different for an older war horse like Bill Blair, who served long and well as Defence Minister. A political career snuffed out at 41 is difficult to take.

It is plain to see that Donald Trump has steered the U.S. ship of state into new depths of corruption. He is also giving a distorted and false definition to the word genocide, while looking the other way as the Israeli government practices real genocide in Gaza.
 
This is a complicated ball of wax, so let us begin with the most blatant recent example of Trump’s erratic and dangerous foreign policy.
 
                                    Tale of Trump corruption starts with a jet plane.

Trump this week accepted a $400 million luxury 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar for use as Air Force One and later as a mainstay of Trump’s personal presidential library.

“Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our country,” said Trump, claiming that the “free” gift will save the United States money that can instead be spent to “Make America Great Again.”

Trump added that the jet is being given to the United States Air Force/Department of Defense, “NOT TO ME! It is a gift from a Nation, Qatar, that we have successfully defended for many years.”

He claimed that other countries have far superior planes to the current Air Force One: “We’re the United States of America and I believe we should have the most impressive plane…I get nothing, I get to fly it like any other President would," he added, stating the Qatar-gifted jet will be "decommissioned" once the U.S.-ordered Air Force One plane is ready.

Trump’s planned acceptance of this gift has raised legal and ethical concerns from both Democrats and Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that he would be placing a hold on Justice Department nominees awaiting Senate confirmation until the White House delivers a full accounting of the deal.

“This is not just naked corruption, it’s the kind of thing that even Putin would give a double take,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
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Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas also voiced their concerns over the gift.

Local Government Minister Aaron Kennedy is wise to refuse to commit to a one-year deadline to complete property tax reforms.
 
On Tuesday, the government of Premier Susan Holt tabled a bill in the Legislature to freeze most property assessments for at least one year. In its successful election campaign last year, the government promised to deliver on property tax reforms.
 
The government described the measure to cut costs for households and businesses.

Kennedy is the man who defeated Premier Blaine Higgs in his Quispamsis riding in the 1924 election. Higgs was known for his “one size fits all” approach to reforms, especially municipal reform. This resulted in wholesale amalgamations and service consolidations which have brought chaos. Those changes were done with precious-little consultation with the public.
 
in one local example, fire departments, both municipal and rural, volunteer, in the St. Stephen area, were scrunched together with no plan or clear lines of authority. Firefighters who had donated their time selflessly to dangerous work, sometimes over many years, were rightfully unhappy.
 
As far as rural/municipal taxation, too many rural property owners have been waiting for the ‘other shoe to drop’ in property tax increases, as they were caught up in amalgamations done without consultation.
 
Taxation and assessment are a complex part of public policy. A very thorough reform in this area was done in the 1960’s by the Liberal government of Louis Robichaud. Called Equal Opportunity (EO), the program was designed to overcome huge discrepancies in service delivery and taxation in different regions in the province. For instance, the southern county of Saint John was spending $312 annually per student on education, while Gloucester County, the province’s poorest was spending just $144 per student.

Such discrepancies were brought to light in the famous Byrne report, done by lawyer Edward Byrne. His voluminous and meticulous report was tabled in the legislature in 1963.
 
Premier Robichaud saw that the political implications were significant and that reforms would have to be done gradually. Indeed, there was intense controversy in the province, and going ahead took political courage.
 
We won’t go into details here, but the result was political success for the government, with election victories in 1963 and 1967. By 1967 the main points of the EO implementation were largely complete. The reforms were in place for the 1970 election, when the government changed, but the new Progressive Conservative Premier, Richard Hatfield, remained committed to the principles of EO.
 
Clearly, the Holt government is not looking forward to a four-year reform process in the municipal sector. Our point here is that this field does not lend itself to a cookie cutter, one-size fits all, approach.
 
There are real implications for municipalities which are required by law to balance their budgets. The government should be prepared to assist municipalities that face serious problems.
 
Nonetheless, the provincial government must be prepared to do its reform properly and one year may not be enough.
 
Minister Kennedy and Premier Holt have defeated Goliath before, and they can do it again. It’s time for strong leadership and a realistic timeframe on a key file for the province.

Prime Minister Mark Carney held his own this week in his meeting with Donald Trump at the Whitehouse this week. The Trump-Carney meeting with the media present was held in the oval office surrounded by Trump’s usual suspects including Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. 

Carney kept his cool, talked just four times but made his points. After Trump stuck to his usual approach, such as demeaning “the artificial, ruler-drawn border with Canada”, Carney made his best statement of the meeting: “As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale…The White House is one of them, Buckingham Palace another. Add Canada to the list. It’s not for sale. It won’t be for sale – ever,” Carney said.

This is the straight talk that we as a country never had from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who so often resorted to meaningless, marshmallow talk. 

Seasoned observers called Carney the “only adult in the room” in the Whitehouse that day.
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Trump likes gold, his Trump tower in New York is festooned with it. So are his decorations of the Oval Office. His cabinet is peopled with billionaires—not a prerequisite requirement for quality governance.

As we all know, Trump is fixated on “deals”. Later this week he announced a very preliminary trade deal with Great Britain. Details are sketchy but the very fact that he is in the process of making a deal, may bode well for renewal of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, USMCA, or as we like to call it, CUSMA, the Canada, U.S. Mexico agreement. 

Carney appears to be nudging Trump toward renegotiating the USMCA, which Trump signed during his first term in office. Having a framework for trade would be far better than putting up with Trump’s constantly changing and erratic tariff impositions.

Meanwhile Trump is still proving that he is a nasty piece of work. He is ending federal funding for PBS and MPBN, which is the closest thing in the USA to our Canadian public broadcaster, the CBC.

Trump is also threatening a 100 per cent tariff on foreign-made films, which could be devastating for the Canadian film industry mainly centred in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Hollywood is effectively pricing itself out of feature filmmaking as many quality film producers turn to Canada and other non-American countries for talent, as well as less expensive locales to do their business.

Meanwhile Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre continues his efforts to soften his image since the April 28 election. Uncharacteristically he wished Carney good luck for his trip.

Poilievre has announced he has decided to run in a safe Alberta seat being vacated by Damien Kurek, an MP since 2019. In the general election Kurek won with 82 per cent of the vote. Carney has vowed there will be “no nonsense” from him in the calling of an early by-election in the riding.

Poilievre has declared his intention to continue as leader, and he received support at the first post-election caucus of the Conservatives, where former leader Andrew Scheer was chosen as Interim Leader heading into the next sitting of the House.

In the Parliamentary system, it is very rare for a government to do well without a strong, aggressive, but patriotic, Official Opposition. Other smaller parties are vital as well, but we trust that the Opposition Conservatives will soon resolve their problems and perform their duties well for the good of the country.

The Liberals did not get their majority in Monday’s election, but Canada has much to be happy about. The threat from the U.S. disrupter, Donald Trump, is still very real, and Carney is the best leader to help our country through to the other side of the tariff wars.     
                            
It was a surprise that the Conservative Party finished a very strong second. The election results at press time give the Conservatives 144 seats in the House of Commons with 41.3 percent of the popular vote, as against 169 seats (just three short of a majority) and 43.7 percent for the Liberals.

Two of the biggest stories of the election were that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did not win their seats in the House of Commons. Singh promptly resigned as leader; Poilievre is not yet prepared to do the honourable thing.

Poilievre’s emphasis on “affordability” in his campaign definitely helped the Conservatives, but there is no doubt that his angry, “let prisoners come out of jail in a box” political style, cost him the Prime Ministership which he wanted so much he could taste it.

The Conservative Leader no doubt hopes to stay on in his job, and he appears, so far, to have the support of prominent members of his party to do so.

But Poilievre will have to rely on a by-election to re-enter the House when he has none of the levers of office to determine the timing of a partial election or a way to find an easy reward for a colleague prepared to give up his seat to offer Poilievre a pathway. The government can wait up to six months for a by-election to be held.