Political insider for February 2: Erin O’Toole tries to get votes; Ottawa can’t keep up with the protests; Alberta RCMP moves into a lockdown
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Erin O’Toole is in a desperate fight to muster enough votes to survive a caucus vote today, the Balloon reports. He and his team are working on the phones to prevent an open revolt, which they blame on the former leader. Andres Scheer and/or Parliamentarian from Alberta genuine garnet. Both sides say they have enough votes to win.
The anti-O’Toole faction says it has 63 of the 119 MPs on its side. However, O’Toole’s camp believes he can win a simple majority of votes. But some Conservative sources acknowledged that MPs may be pledging support for both the leader’s office and dissidents. Another source said MPs sitting on the fence are worried about who will actually run in a potential leadership race.
Neither side backs down. calgary parliamentarian bob benzenewho published a letter on Monday calling for a vote on O’Toole’s leadership, complained that O’Toole defiantly statement On Monday night it showed that he was “doubling down, launching attacks and threatening ‘consequences’ against any MP who dares to dissent”.
The Balloon says possible candidates to serve as interim leader are Candace Bergen Ed Fast or Gerard Dellell.
Willing to change: Global reports that O’Toole told caucus members he is open to “changing some policies he campaigned on just six months ago, if he survives Wednesday’s vote.”
Mail: 21 ex-deputies sent an open letter to the current parliamentarians asking them to fire the leader.
Kenney next door: Alberta parliamentarians are divided, CBC reports, but jason kenney he’s got O’Toole’s back.
Ford will not race: Doug Fordwho is said to want to be prime minister, told reporters he is not interested in O’Toole’s job, the Sun reports.
CPC Yahoos: Andrew Coyne dissects the problems of the conservatives in the Balloon, concluding that O’Toole, whatever his flaws, is not the problem. The problem is MPs who have made common cause with fraudsters and conspiracy theorists in Congress: “associating the party with known racists, hurling inflammatory rhetoric about other party leaders, delivering debunked conspiracy theories.” Get rid of them, not O’Toole, he suggests.
Bring Poilievre: Writing in the Post, former Stephen Harper speechwriter Michael Taube is pulling for pierre polièvre to get the job.
I’ve known him since he was an intern in Jason Kenney’s office and have seen him become a political tour de force in this country. He is smart, talented, experienced and media savvy. He has youth on his side and a young family. He knows how to sell the party and its political brand as well as anyone he has seen in recent years.
More and more miserable: Speaking of the convoy, which Poilievre supports, a portion of downtown Ottawa remains gridlocked, with increasingly miserable residents complaining of noise and violence. hooliganism.
Closed mall: CTV reports that the Rideau Center mall will be closed for a week. The police, apparently unable to guarantee the security of the city’s largest shopping mall, charged two men, the Citizen reports.
Getting Hard: paramedics tell the citizen they cannot continue like this: “This is definitely an incident that the city cannot bear. Put COVID on top and it’s absolutely not sustainable. When something like this happens, the house of cards starts to crumble.”
I had enough: CBC has a nice story about the angry three local women who confronted the truckers.
Friendly: CTV you must a nice story about how people are helping neighbors out of misery.
Theater Enemies: The Balloon reports that the convoy has killed the performance of a one-man play by the legendary actor Walter Borden.
Difficult to finish: experts tell cbc there is no easy way to get the city back to normal. york professor Jack Rozdilski says the police effort to force an end to the demonstration could be harsh: “At least initially, it would be much better for everyone if the protesters made the decision to leave on their own. Using more police force, using heavy equipment, using various crowd control tactics, would move… in the direction of paramilitary action. The kinds of actions that we don’t traditionally see on the streets of Canada.”
Still locked: Meanwhile, in Alberta, mounted police have begun moving in on truckers blocking the border at Coutts, CTV. reportsalthough they do not seem to have cleared the road.
But Bill Fortier of CTV News reported that as some vehicles made their way out of the initial blockade, passenger vehicles and what appeared to be farm vehicles began to arrive and create a secondary blockade. Reporters and cameras watching the situation moved further away from the area.
-30- write zip joan brydenwhich hangs up its spurs after 40 years of firsts, was honored with Legos.
— Stephen Maher