A new coalition, a different politics

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 3:55 PM - 33 Comments

It would be a stretch to claim that Gordon Campbell received much of a “mandate” in last week’s British Columbia election. With 46 per cent of the vote, in an election that saw turnout fall, for the first time, to less than 50 per cent, Campbell is the choice of barely one in five electors.

Still, it is triumph enough that he was not defeated. Not only were Campbell’s Liberals seeking a third term, an honour voters have historically proved unwilling to bestow, but as the incumbents in a recession-year election, they were fighting daunting odds. His win ought to make opposition parties in other parts of the country sit up straight: if they were under any illusion that they had only to show up, and the economy would carry them to power, they can think again.

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Dear Andrew Coyne, not in my backyard

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 4:04 PM - 12 Comments

Dear Andrew Coyne,

Thank you for your column urging British Columbians to “light a candle for electoral reformers everywhere” by voting for the Single Transferable Vote, better known as STV. It was a riveting read, though the fact that it took almost three pages of the magazine to explain the concept gives one pause, don’t you think? And, no, we don’t think it an intrusion that you “being from another province and all” would wish to offer us advice. We’re quite used to that.

In fact, ‘I’m from Central Canada and I’m here to help’ is a sentence we hear quite often. We tend to respond thusly: “La-la-la-la your lips are moving but I can’t hear you!”

Resent your exhortation? Not a bit. But ignore it, that’s a whole other matter.

And ignore it we did.

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A vote that really counts

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 138 Comments

Dear British Columbia:

I know you’re kind of busy right now, and maybe it’s not my place, being from another province and all, but could I just ask you, on behalf of the rest of the country, to please vote Yes in the May 12 electoral reform referendum? I wouldn’t intrude, except it’s terribly important—important not just for B.C., but for all of us.

Because politics is broken in Canada, and electoral reform—changing the way we vote—may just be the key to fixing it.

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The splendour of British Columbia

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 4, 2009 at 11:02 PM - 15 Comments

Last two sentences of an election bulletin from the B.C. NDP.

The bottom line: want cheaper beer? Don’t vote BC Liberal.

Newsmakers

By Lianne George - Friday, May 1, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 1 Comment

Grandma drama

Sarah Obama, the 87-year-old step-grandmother of President Barack Obama, suddenly found herself at the centre of a religious tug-of-war last week in her native Kenya. Obama, a Muslim, accepted an invitation to attend a Seventh Day Adventist Church event, allegedy as an honorary guest. But local Muslim leaders protested, alleging that the event was part of a plot to convert Obama to Christianity now that she is a local celebrity. “Mama Sarah should not be forced by anybody to join Christianity since she is a Muslim,” said Sheik Mohamed Khalifa, of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya. “Muslims will not sit and watch one of their own being coerced by some religious leaders to convert to Christianity.” Obama ultimately did not attend, but according to her son, Saidi Obama—the U.S. President’s uncle—this was not because of any attempted conversion. “She was to attend as a VIP,” he told the Telegraph, “but in the end she had other commitments.”

Safety minister’s safety lesson

British Columbia’s Solicitor General and Minister of Public Safety John van Dongen resigned on Monday after being taken to task for unsafe driving. Last week, van Dongen was alerted by the Office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles—an agency for which he was responsible—that he is prohibited from driving for four months due to two recent incidents of excessive speeding. “I’m not proud of my driving record that triggered this prohibition,” van Dongen told CBC Radio. “I take responsibility for it.” B.C.’s NDP Leader Carole James called on him to resign early on, but Premier Gordon Campbell praised him for owning up to his mistakes. The premier has had his own dangerous driving misadventures. While on vacation in Maui in 2003, Campbell was arrested for impaired driving, and fined US$913. Van Dongen still plans to run as a Liberal candidate in the May 12 election.

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Will the West revolt?

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 7:01 PM - 51 Comments

Talk about an Alberta nightmare: Ottawa run by a Quebec Liberal with the support of the commies and the separatists. It has certainly got Western Canada all riled up. But what if this three-headed coalition actually gets control of the House? What if a Prime Minister from Alberta, whose Conservative party received 72 of Western Canada’s 92 seats in the recent election gets dumped—at a time when Alberta-B.C.’s economic strength is phenomenally strong and central Canada enters its grim decline? Will the West revolt?

Perhaps. Especially since the mere threat has sparked mass outrage in Alberta and B.C., where political and business leaders warn that it could trigger a whole new wave of discontent. “It’s not Liberals versus Conservatives, or left versus right: They’ve snookered an elected government from Western Canada, with the interests of Western Canada at heart,” says Barry Cooper, a political scientist at the University of Calgary. “This is a fight between central Canada and us.” From Calgary, it “looks like Ottawa and Quebec just want to screw the West—period,” he says. “The only thing these three clowns have in common is that they’re all from the St. Lawrence Valley.”

Last month, the Liberals were reduced to a single MP in Manitoba, a single MP in Saskatchewan and five in B.C., where they held 9 seats prior to the call. Their lack of depth means that the East Vancouver leftist stalwart, Libby Davies is—seriously—up for consideration for senior federal cabinet minister for B.C. That, in itself, is enough to make Vancouver Liberals squirm. Alberta would replace five Conservative cabinet ministers with the only non-Tory member in the entire province, new NDP MP Linda Duncan, who says no new oil sands projects should be approved until Ottawa develops full environmental and health effects policies.

According to a national poll released today by Angus Reid, support for maintaining the Conservative Party over the Liberal-NDP coalition is highest in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. It also showed that distrust of the Bloc Québécois’s role in the federal government is highest in the West, with the largest majorities in Alberta (82 per cent), Manitoba-Saskatchewan (74 per cent) and B.C. (66 per cent).

So what’s a westerner to do? “Take a firm stance against the coming, NDP-led raid on the provincial economy,” says Cooper, who told Maclean’s that he was inundated with calls and emails yesterday from Alberta separatists who see this as a “golden opportunity” to advance the cause. “Tell your premier he cannot cooperate.” On that front, Manitoba’s NDP premier Gary Doer is keeping mum. Alberta premier Ed Stelmach wants the Tories to adjourn until the new year, to allow government the chance to bring forward a budget. So does B.C. premier Gordon Campbell, who believes a coalition government is a risky leap of faith, that, if it fails, will make Canada’s economic crisis significantly worse. And Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall is focusing his criticism on the Liberal and NDP leaders for signing an accord supported by the Bloc.

For the West—which takes a relatively dim view of an auto-sector bailout—the stakes are high. Unreasonably tough emissions laws, higher equalization payments, carbon taxes, federal development taxes, NEP II—all this and more may lie ahead, says Cooper, who adds that both Layton and Dion threaten the oil sands, at present, the country’s main economic driver. “When there’s money piled up, people are less cantakerous,” says Paul Thomas, a political scientist at the University of Manitoba. “But regional grievances are amplified by economic hard times.” And there are nothing but dark days ahead.

"A time for grown-ups"

By selley - Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 1:29 PM - 11 Comments

Must-reads: Rosie DiManno on women in Afghanistan; Jeffrey Simpson on fixing the fisheries; Dan Gardner on “broken windows”; Jim Coyle on Premier Dad.

Tightening the belt; opening the wallet
The pundits weigh in on deficits, stimuli, spending, and fish.

Stephen Harper must act quickly not just on our economic fundamentals, L. Ian MacDonald argues in the Montreal Gazette, but to assure Canadians that despite all appearances during the election campaign, he’s on top of the situation. “Harper’s initial response, that the fundamentals of the Canadian economy were strong, was as disconnected from reality as John McCain when he made the same comment in the middle of the stock market crash,” MacDonald observes, and he says Harper was lucky to escape the fallout with his political life. Now, he says, Harper must “level with the Canadian people about the size of the storm we are facing. This is a time for grown-ups, not playing silly games about whether we can run a deficit.”

Meanwhile, the Calgary Herald’s Don Martin reports, the government’s optics gurus will be busy enforcing austerity on politicians and civil servants. Tomorrow’s fiscal update will feature pay freezes, cuts to “discretionary spending and a clampdown on travel and assorted parliamentary perks” for our elected MPs and “top bureaucrats,” we learn. Junkets, friend-and-family travel, health benefits—all slashed, potentially. The combined effect of this will amount to “pennies” against the “megacuts needed to keep a large deficit at bay,” says Martin—but, monkeys that we are, the PMO presumes we will clap appreciatively and stamp our feet to see the bad times spread around a little.

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Gordon Campbell, call your office

By selley - Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 12:38 PM - 12 Comments

Jim Flaherty on Stéphane Dion on the U.S. financial crisis:

The American credit crunch did not start two weeks ago.  It started over a year ago and it has been issue number one for every person with any understanding of economics.

Yet, for the past year, Mr. Dion has been totally oblivious to what has been going on.  And his carbon tax proves it.  At a time of global economic uncertainty, no responsible economic manager would suggest experimenting with risky new tax schemes or massive increases in government spending.

Megapundit: Stanfield, Mondale, Stevenson… Dion?

By selley - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 2:22 PM - 12 Comments

Must-reads: Don Martin on Gerry Ritz; Christie Blatchford on a drug dealer who murdered another drug dealer; Andrew Cohen on Stéphane Dion.

Counting on a miracle
Who will save the Liberals? Michael Ignatieff? Elizabeth May? Um… Gerry Ritz?

Let’s say the Liberals really are road kill on toast, Andrew Cohen proposes in the Ottawa Citizen—that, after the Oct. 14 debacle, they won’t be a legitimate electoral threat for eight more years, give or take. Not a happy prospect for Stéphane Dion, who has every right just now to feel a bit sorry for himself. But how, Cohen wonders, will history judge him? Well, he had the “guts” to fight for Canada in 1995 “when few others of his ilk did,” the guile to spearhead the Clarity Act, the tenacity to stand up to Paul Martin and the “reformer” instincts to advocate real solutions for global warming. Thus, while politically he will be included among the “failures,” he should rightly be positioned at the vanguard of those failures: Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark, Walter Mondale, Adlai Stevenson… Stéphane Dion.

Dion’s decision not to field a candidate in Central Nova also “begs for a chapter in the book on his leadership,” James Travers argues in the Toronto Star. It “infuriated Liberal loyalists,” cast doubt on his “political instincts” and gave an “upstart party” a somewhat undeserved boost in the national consciousness. But it could still “pay Dion a qualified dividend,” Travers argues, by allowing Elizabeth May to drag “the debates away from the tightly scripted Conservative message”—i.e., Dion will destroy us all! Run!—”and back to the policy choices that drew her into politics.” She could hammer away at just how conservative, and thus terrifying, the Tories are. And, in a best-case scenario, she might provoke the new, cuddlier, cashmere-clad Harper into a purple-faced rage in which, we imagine, he’d declare his abiding hatred for the environment and reveal the entirety of his monstrous hidden agenda.

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News Flash: Public Servant Breaks Sweat

By Ken MacQueen - Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 11:39 PM - 0 Comments

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell was quick out of the blocks in claiming a share of the Olympic glory in Canada’s belated start to the Beijing medal race. “All British Columbians and people across the nation are incredibly proud of [wrestler] Carol Huynh of Hazelton, and [rowing pair] Dave Calder of Victoria and Scott Frandsen of Kelowna for bringing home some of our country’s first Olympic medals from Beijing.”

Campbell also proudly noted that Calder “is a member of B.C.’s talented public service in the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.” In fact, Calder had quit rowing to join the public service after his boat was disqualified in Athens for straying from its lane. He only returned to rowing this year, taking a partial leave from his job while balancing the brutal demands of training with the responsibilities of a husband and father. “His work ethic is incredible,” says wife Rachel. Who says public servants don’t break a sweat? Continue…

Megapundit: Free trade in chicken eggs or bust!

By selley - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 12:54 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Jeffrey Simpson on trade hypocrisy; Gary Mason on aboriginal progress in the Yukon; Andrew Cohen on summer camp.

Bitch, bitch, bitch
This just in: we’re a bunch of protectionist, defeatist sheep. Discuss.

Jeffrey Simpson is back in a foul temper, and The Globe and Mail is better for it, we feel. Today he decries our hypocritical stance on world trade, which involves demanding “other countries lower their subsides and protection for agricultural products that we export … while insisting that whole sections of Canada’s agricultural market remain effectively closed to imports”—notably poultry, eggs and dairy, which are subject to gigantic import tariffs. Since there’s no political courage to anger farmers—particularly in Quebec, which benefits most from this “across-the-board, across-the-country racket”—and no groundswell of public opposition, Simpson says the only hope is that ongoing trade talks establish a framework in which Canada will simply be forced to change.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald‘s Dan Leger believes we’re becoming “a society of complainers and defeatists,” noting our fatalistic tendencies on Afghanistan (“we can’t do anything to help … so we shouldn’t even try”), law-and-order (“let’s just clean up the blood and punish the perps,” and never mind root causes), the economy (“we can’t stand on our own feet economically, so let’s shut our doors to foreign trade and investment”), and culture (“let’s just be tax-averse Neanderthals”). He concedes the media may have played a teensy role in creating this atmosphere, and rendering politicians fearful of espousing any big, new ideas.

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Megapundit: Let us compare ritualistic cocoons

By selley - Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 1:16 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Kevin Libin and Barbara Yaffe on Alberta’s image problems; Konrad Yakabuski on nuclear power; Haroon Siddiqui on the US-India nuclear agreement; Vaughn Palmer on the BC carbon tax.

Politicians in peril
From saving the planet to rebranding a licence plate, Canada’s elected officials are making summer difficult for themselves.

Can Stéphane Dion sell Canada on his Green Shift by summer’s end? The question is crucial, says the Toronto Star‘s James Travers, because a fall election would expose him to a leadership review at the party convention in December, where only a “winning campaign” would be likely to save his hide. So even if Dion quite reasonably decides he needs more time, he’ll be besieged by people inside and outside the party accusing him of stalling simply in order to avoid that review. Travers knows what you’re thinking: “Regardless of when the election is, he will eventually face a leadership review,” so why worry? Because delaying until 2009 might buy Dion an extra two-and-a-half years of leadership (and sideways glances from Michael Ignatieff), that’s why.

The Vancouver Sun‘s Vaughn Palmer is concerned that BC Premier Gordon Campbell’s carbon tax (by virtue of being far more “ambitious” than those of neighbouring jurisdictions), and the accompanying cap-and-trade system (by virtue of uncertainty, since it isn’t designed yet), are threatening the “commitments to growth and investment that got him where he is today.” The resource sector is particularly imperiled, he argues, since its “prices are set by international commodity markets,” making it unable to pass the tax burden on to consumers.

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Megapundit: Climate change—like Y2K, only warmer

By selley - Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 1:33 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Dan Gardner on Y2K+8; Colby Cosh on gun control.

On Americans, Canadians, and guns
Why we don’t have a well-armed militia, and why maybe we should.

“We are fond of interpreting [Canada's and the United States'] different gun cultures as the product of their origins,” Colby Cosh writes in the National Post, but as recently as 100 years ago, the differences were few and far between: “a housebreaker or robber in Canada could then still expect to be greeted by the nose of a revolver,” and concerned homeowners could purchase their weapon of choice by mail order. The fact that US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s amazing defence of the handgun (e.g., as opposed to a rifle, “it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police”) now “seem[s] to float to us from some alternate universe very far away” is proof, says Cosh, of how “small social differences … can be exaggerated by means of policy within just a few generations.”

The Toronto Sun‘s Peter Worthington, meanwhile, trots out all the usual statistics to show that gun control doesn’t work, including the fact that the murder rate in Washington, D.C. went up after the city instituted the handgun ban that was overturned by the Supreme Court last week. We wholeheartedly support Worthington’s campaign against Toronto mayor David Miller’s hopelessly facile anti-gun campaign, but as usual with these arguments, it’s really just a big mess of chicken and eggs. For example: is Arlington, Va.’s miniscule murder rate in comparison to Washington’s a byproduct of its relatively high rate of private gun ownership, or its relatively rich and well-educated populace? (Answer: it depends whether the gun control opponent is trying to argue that gun ownership reduces crime, or that criminals, not law-abiding gun owners, are the real and only problem.)

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Megapundit: Zimbabwean regime change for dummies

By selley - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 12:46 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: John Ibbitson on education in America; Christie Blatchford on Momin Khawaja.

It’s not easy being green
What carbon taxation means for oil companies and their CEOs, Gordon Campbell, and Stéphane Dion’s reputation, such as it is, in Quebec.

If Alberta’s oil executives really believe that the burden of fighting greenhouse gas emissions should be “shared across the country” and across other industries, The Globe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson says they better think twice before “they shoot off their mouths” about the federal carbon tax, as has been the provincial government’s “knee jerk reaction” so far. The alternative, after all, is “a cap-and-trade system that targets the producers almost exclusively and mostly lays off any direct lifestyle change or contribution to greenhouse reductions by consumers.” Strangely absent from this analysis is anything to suggest the oil companies are, in fact, unhappy with the carbon tax as compared to a cap-and-trade scenario. In fact, Simpson claimed in a recent column that they like the idea. Colour us confused.

And from the other side of the aisle, here’s the Financial Post‘s Terence Corcoran excoriating those same executives, plus those in carbon-consuming industries like the airlines, for failing “to live up to their responsibilities to protect shareholders” and “feeding the [climate change] beast with Boy Scout responses—carbon offsets, green programs and public relations gambits—that actually do nothing more than reinforce the idea that their products and services are part of the climate problem.” What good has it done them? he asks. Not much. This week, he notes, James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said they “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”

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Megapundit: John McWho?

By selley - Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Colby Cosh on the NFL invasion; John Ivison on immigration reform.

Welcome to silly season
Has Parliament lost its mind? Or just the people running it?

Between Vic Toews’ “politically charged” and “personally insulting” remarks about Louise Arbour and Stéphane Dion’s “rush to Conservative rescue” with his ill-timed carbon tax plan, the Toronto Star‘s James Travers believes Ottawa’s “mental machinery” has “slip[ped] out of gear.” The Commons committee that is Canadian politics is a few members short of quorum, one might say. And while Dion’s woes have been well-documented, Travers is particularly struck by Toews’ illustration of “this government’s view of Canada’s place in the world”—we’re “back on the world stage,” they constantly assure us, and yet they have no interest in a seat on the UN Security Council, they backed “the Bush administration candidate” for head of the International Organization for Migration over the Canadian candidate (Sergio Marchi, that filthy Liberal), and they dismiss anyone who doesn’t share their unequivocal support for Israel as a “disgrace.”

The Vancouver Sun‘s Barbara Yaffe agrees the Tories desperately need to “get their mojo back,” but she argues that none of these scandals, affairs, peccadilloes and contretemps would be so serious if the government hadn’t managed to “run out of governing projects” at precisely the time “Canada is experiencing serious economic challenges.” If no new “governing projects” are forthcoming, however, she suggests adding some “neglected players” to the Cabinet lineup—Diane Ablonczy, perhaps, or James Moore—to soften the focus on Harper’s disastrous “deny everything and evade the media” tactics.

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Megapundit: The revolting caucuses

By selley - Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 1:54 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Vaughn Palmer and Chantal Hébert on carbon taxes; Dan Gardner on solving the energy crisis.

What ever happened to loyalty?
The Liberals are fuming about their leader’s carbon tax, the Dippers about their leader’s position on the “Durban II” conference. Meanwhile, at stately Harper Manor, all is quiet.

Forget the Liberal caucus and Chevy Suburban owners, says the Toronto Star‘s Chantal Hébert. The real fight Stéphane Dion will face over his carbon tax may be with the Premiers—or three of them anyway. Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty has enough to deal with just with soaring oil prices, thank you very much, without the feds piling on; British Columbia’s Gordon Campbell quite enjoys the idea of redistributing his own carbon tax revenues; and Quebec’s Jean Charest faces the prospect of the federal tax coming down on top of his own. “Leading economist” Tom Courchene says it’s high time the federal government took the reins, Hébert notes, but even he calls carbon taxation “the most complex constellation of policies ever contemplated in Canada.”

More bad news for Dion: the Vancouver Sun‘s Vaughn Palmer reports that 59 per cent of granola-munching, earth-smooching British Columbians are now opposed to Campbell’s carbon tax. And though voters don’t seem willing to take it out on his government quite yet, communications on the file has been abysmal. “By focusing public attention on the [$100] ‘climate dividend‘” instead of the offsetting tax shifts, Palmer argues, “the Liberals may well have managed the exceptional feat of reducing income taxes … without getting credit for doing so.” And amidst record-high gas prices, the NDP are rolling out an “axe the tax” campaign—something Campbell should consider, Palmer suggests.

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BC's Permanent Tax On Everything apparently doesn't pay for universities

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 1:53 PM - 0 Comments

I was wondering what’s up with Gordon Campbell’s really weird management of the higher-education file, which is turning into a bit of a spiralling helldive of disaster, when it occurred to me to consult Maclean’s on campus. Sure enough, no surprise, Erin Millar has the news, and it’s seriously not good.

I don’t want to write Campbell off just yet. He has commissioned a glossy report in hopes of making BC the best-educated place in North America. But so far, he seems to be taking the long way around to it.

In praise of the open-face sandwich

By selley - Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 1:13 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Rosie DiManno on Afghan politics; Terence Corcoran and Greg Weston on immigration reform; James Travers on access to information; Jonathan Kay on Selwyn House.

Backlogged and gob-smacked
It’s not as easy to process 900,000 backed-up immigration claims as you think!

“There must be better ways to tame an unruly bureaucracy” at Citizenship and Immigration Canada than to hand unprecedented control over immigration to the minister, Terence Corcoran argues in the Financial Post. Bill C-50, which proposes to do just that, leaves the system vulnerable to “arbitrary political power and abuse,” he argues, and he doesn’t even understand how it’s going to solve the backlog. The big questions still need to be answered, he insists. Why issue temporary worker permits to people whose skills we need, and permanent status to hundreds of thousands whose skills we don’t? And why are we admitting no more immigrants today than we were in 1992?

Sun Media’s Greg Weston has discovered another “rather significant glitch” in the government’s plan to wade into the backlog and pluck out the people we need: “officials tell us there is nothing in their computers to distinguish the doctors from the ditch-diggers.” Continue…

The Rosie DiManno Show is back for another season

By selley - Monday, May 12, 2008 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Rosie DiManno on Afghan corruption, Afghan weddings and US Marines; Scott Taylor on Canadian counter-insurgency training; Rex Murphy on Clinton Inc.; Lysiane Gagnon on immigration; Chantal Hébert on Stephen Harper and Quebec; David Olive on the New York Times.

Welcome to the James Travuniverse
Up is down. Wrong is right. Julie Couillard matters. The Prime Minister must not undertake home improvements, on pain of electoral disaster.

Despite what you may have heard or very reasonably concluded on your own, the Toronto Star‘s James Travers argues that Julie Couillard’s relationship with Maxime Bernier is very important. Why? Buckle up, Canada. It’s because Harper only appoints Cabinet ministers for reasons of optics and strategy, not competence—in Bernier’s case, “to put a pretty face on the unpopular Afghanistan mission while getting under Bloc Québécois skin.” Thus, it doesn’t matter that a past romance with a woman who once dated a Hells Angel is unimportant to the foreign minister’s job; it matters that it compromises the optical and strategic reasons Harper installed Bernier in the first place. Got that? Us neither. Luckily, none of it matters.

If Harper risks political suicide by following the Auditor-General’s advice by ordering repairs on 24 Sussex Drive, Sun Media’s Greg Weston suggests (apparently in earnest) that he move into Rideau Hall and kick the Governor General down the driveway to Rideau Gate. Continue…