If not now, when? Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Maclean's resident numbers expert Philippe J. Fournier reads the polling tea leaves and concludes that even though most Canadians don't want an election this fall, they are going to get one, because the Liberals, who get to decide, won't have a better opportunity for a majority any time soon. So, why an election? The latest polls hold at least part of the answer: Because the Liberals could potentially secure a majority and may not have another window to do so in the foreseeable future, even though reaching the threshold of 170 seats may still be quite a challenge according to the data. Nonetheless, if not this fall, then when exactly could the Liberals hope for a better window to go for their third straight mandate? Next spring, after a second consecutive budget with a deficit ranging in the hundreds of billions? Unlikely. Another sign: Labour union Unifor has launched attack ads against Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole, the Hill Times reports. The ads, which portray O’Toole as an old truck, paint the Tory leader as “just another conservative politician, who’s going to steer Canada in the wrong direction,” said Unifor president Jerry Dias. When exactly? The Hill Times has sources saying we can expect the campaign start "on Aug. 8 or Aug. 15, with the election date set to be Sept. 13 or Sept. 20." “We’re too deep in to not drop the writ [in the next two weeks],” one unnamed Liberal told the newspaper. What it will be like: The Star's Alex Boutilier had a report from Nova Scotia, where a low-key campaign is underway. The Aug. 17 vote will be the closest thing Canada has seen to a “post-pandemic” election since COVID-19 shut down the country, drawing voters’ minds away from everyday politics to more existential issues. Will it be a referendum on the Liberals’ management of the pandemic in Nova Scotia? Or will the ballot box question focus more on how the province recovers from the economic and public health crisis? Will the Liberals be judged on their performance over the last 16 months, or shuffled out the door in favour of a new direction? Those questions are relevant not only to voters in Nova Scotia, but to national party leaders and strategists as they prepare for a federal election call expected within weeks. For them, the Nova Scotia campaign could provide lessons—or cautionary tales—for their own post-pandemic pitches. Who needs jabs? The Globe has an in-depth report on the unvaccinated, whose hesitance and resistance is posing a public-health challenge. The good news is that we are doing well compared with other countries: As of Thursday, 66 per cent of eligible Canadians had received both jabs, or 58 per cent of the total population, which includes children who don’t yet qualify for a shot. And 81 per cent of eligible Canadians had received one dose, or 71 per cent of the total population. Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. The bad news is that the remaining people are hard to convince: No matter their reasons, stragglers are inherently harder to vaccinate than eager beavers, according to Phillip Anthony, manager of the East Toronto mobile vaccination strategy at Michael Garron Hospital. That explains why the number of shots Canada injects daily has fallen off a cliff, from a high of 552,900 (on a seven-day rolling average) on July 8 to an average of 288,512 a day last week. “Now you have to be very mobile,” Mr. Anthony said. “You have to go get people.” Warning from academics: Academics of Chinese origin in Canada are warning that new national security assessments for federally funded research could lead to “racial profiling Chinese researchers as foreign agents,” the Globe reports. Two groups recently released a statement opposing the new risk assessment process laid out in national security guidelines laid out last month to protect Canadian intellectual property from falling into the hands of authoritarian governments, which is understood as aimed at Chinese espionage. Human rights question: CBC's Evan Dyer has an interesting report on the importance of Canadian tourism to Cuba, and the importance of tourism to the Cuban government. At the top of the military's hotel empire sits General Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Calleja, father of two of Raul Castro's grandchildren and a member of Cuba's Politburo—a man some Cubans believe is the one really running the country alongside his father-in-law, using President Miguel Diaz-Canel as a replaceable public face. Rodriguez Lopez-Calleja heads the armed forces' holding company GAESA, which runs a range of tourism, construction, banking, air and ground transport and retail businesses across the country, including the hotel chain Gaviota, which owns most of the four- and five-star hotel rooms in the country. The Cuban state also owns Cuba's two other big chains, the Gran Caribe Hotel Group and Cubanacan, although both chains recently have been losing ground to the military's holding company. — Stephen Maher |
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