Former NDP leader Jack Layton, left, walks through the House of Commons with senior press secretary Karl Belanger on March 22, 2011. Mr. Belanger has announced he will be leaving his position of principal secretary in the office of NDP Leader Tom Mulcair.The Canadian Press
POLITICS BRIEFING
By Chris Hannay (@channay) and Rob Gilroy (@rgilroy)
The Globe Politics newsletter is back. We're pleased to include a roundup of news and opinion on U.S. politics, through until this year's election in November. As always, let us know what you think of the newsletter.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW IN OTTAWA
> How Canada secretly helped remove deadly chemicals from Libya, before they could be used by Islamic State fighters.
> Justin Trudeau says he didn't reveal more about why Hunter Tootoo left cabinet out of respect for the women involved.
> In an exit interview, retiring Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell says he feels "very sorry" that Marc Nadon, one of Stephen Harper's picks for the top court, was rejected, but it was necessary because of a technicality.
> The Liberals appear to be banking on employment going up before the next election, to keep the costs down for the employment insurance program.
> When William and Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, come to Canada later this fall, they will see reminders of one of the ugliest chapters of our history: residential schools.
> Debate about Israel continues to roil within the Green Party.
> Today's fascinating long read: how limits on the temporary foreign worker program are fueling an underground economy.
> And one icon of downtown Ottawa may be getting a controversial new look. The Chateau Laurier is looking to add a new wing with a much more modern design.
A VETERAN LEAVES THE HILL
By Gloria Galloway
Karl Bélanger, a man who is widely regarded as the heart of the federal New Democratic Party and who has worked for NDP leaders for nearly two decades, is stepping away from his job in politics.
Mr. Bélanger, 41, announced at a caucus meeting on Wednesday that he was leaving the office of Tom Mulcair where he was serving as principal secretary after a brief interim stint as the party's national director.
"I had numerous conversations with the chief of staff [Raymond Guardia] about the organization on Parliament Hill and we came to a mutual agreement that, even though it was very hard, it was the right time for me to look at doing something else," Mr. Bélanger told The Globe and Mail. He said he does not have another job lined up at this point, although he expected to represent the NDP on televised political panels.
"I have two young kids. It's kind of funny when you hear politicians talk about family reasons but it is a big factor in a decision like this," Mr. Bélanger said fighting back tears. "The last campaign was hard – two months without seeing them really."
Not only was that campaign long – it was also dispiriting for New Democrats who dropped from 103 seats in the House of Commons to 44.
Mr. Bélanger began his involvement with the NDP long before it was a political force in his native Quebec, and when Quebecois New Democrats were a rarity. He was a candidate in Jonquiere in the 1993 federal election and then again in the 1996 federal by-election in Lac-Saint-Jean.
In 1997, he went to work as the spokesman for then-leader Alexa McDonough. And he was one of the tight inner circle of confidantes who helped propel the NDP to offices of Official Opposition five years ago under Jack Layton. Mr. Layton died of cancer just a few months after that election.
Smart, affable and politically savvy, Bélanger is well liked by reporters and was regarded as a fixture in the party he served.
"I was involved in six federal tours. Obviously our successes in 2011 were a highlight. It was also a very challenging time," he said. "Leaders debates and prepping the leaders was interesting and fun … I went on TV, I talked to people. And some of my words made a difference. Some of my ideas made a difference."
U.S. ELECTION 2016
> Hillary Clinton, the sum of our anxieties: At The Globe and Mail, Stephen Metcalf says Hillary Clinton's image problem is largely the result of an underlying honesty about the world. She tells "complicated truths to anxious and skeptical voters." Metcalfe, who once worked for the Clinton team, says she's "become, for both left and right, a stand-in for every anxiety we have about a fluid, maybe even collapsing world. To the left, she is a 'neoliberal,' selling us down the rivers of global finance. To the right, she is the very devil itself, selling (white) American interests down the river to foreigners of one kind or another."
> In Trump's world, everything is rigged: Elsewhere at The Globe, John Ibbitson writes that the "Trump camp's contemptuous response to an investigation into the Trump Foundation reflects the real division in this campaign between conservative and radical. ... The most important word in Mr. Trump's lexicon is 'rigged.' Everything is rigged, and rigged against him."
> America throws up the white flag: Charles Pierce in Esquire offers a scathing takedown of the U.S. electorate and how it's laying the groundwork for rule by an authoritarian tyrant, whether it's Donald Trump now or someone else later. "Americans are bored with their democracy and they don't have the democratic energy to do anything about it, so they'll settle for an entertaining quasi-strongman. When they decline, democracies get the dictators they deserve. A country mired in apathy and lassitude gets a dictator who can't even put in the hard work of becoming very good at it."
> Dear Democrats: Chill. One of the architects of the "Obama coalition" says nervous Hillary Clinton supporters should ease their fingers off the panic button every time a new poll shows a tightening race with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. David Plouffe says Clinton is "very close to winning" because Virginia, Colorada and Pennsylvania are already beyond Trump's grasp.
> America, for sale? Newsweek looks at the tangled web of global business deals under the Trump Organization banner and the potential for conflicts of interest if they bumped up against U.S. foreign policy. "Never before has an American candidate for president had so many financial ties with American allies and enemies, and never before has a business posed such a threat to the United States."
> Is Putin the new Franco? Jeet Heer thinks so, in this New Republic piece on the sudden love-in for the Russian President on the American right. "The rise of Barack Obama and the political success of liberal social causes, especially LGBTQ rights, has demoralized many on the right, who are now looking to foreign lands and autocratic leaders to stem the tide of moral degradation. In effect, Putin is the new Franco."
WHAT EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT
Campbell Clark (Globe and Mail): "The fact that the Liberal government is seriously considering sending a sizable mission to Mali is remarkable for two things. It may be the most dangerous peacekeeping mission they could choose. And it's a place where [Justin] Trudeau's predecessor, [Stephen] Harper, didn't want to go."
Globe and Mail editorial board: "The main defect of the past several decades of peacekeeping was not just some perverse attitude on the part of unenlightened politicians in the world, such as – arguably – former prime minister Stephen Harper, but rather the propensity of the United Nations missions in the field to dither and ask for instructions from their governments back home in their capitals, places where officials are often not in a hurry – and where some of those same home governments don't really want to take any action at all."
Felix Horne (Globe and Mail): "Canada's new Liberal government, which has promised a new approach on Africa, should start with Ethiopia before the current crisis descends into an even more dangerous and irreversible situation. Canada should strongly – and publicly – condemn the use of lethal force against protesters, push for an international investigation into the killings, and explore ways to hold the security forces to account for their brutality."
Andrew Coyne (National Post): "You would think, then, that it would be a matter of some urgency to the post office's political masters to somehow cajole it into doing the job we pay it to do. Yet whenever Canada Post comes in for one of its periodic public reviews, the focus is always the same: not, how can we improve mail service for Canadians, but how can we make life easier for Canada Post?"
Desmond Cole (Toronto Star): "Suspicion of all immigrants who are not white, or are not members of the former British Empire, is a Canadian value. Canada's founding prime minister, John A. Macdonald, argued that Chinese immigrants to Canada were unfit to vote because they exhibited 'no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations.' Macdonald didn't need to cloak the authority of the state in the language of wanting a 'conversation' about immigrants, as [Kellie] Leitch does today. In his time, there was no conversation to be had."