Bill’s Right On Blog: Politics at the End of Winter – A Sliding Puzzle of Amusement

This past month has been telling for the federal Conservative Party with the defection of Eve Adams to sit as a Liberal under Justin Trudeau, John Baird resigning his high-profile cabinet position, and finally the main communications officer Jason MacDonald leaving the party just recently.

Indeed the cabinet shuffle that followed saw the suddenly empty foreign affairs being filled by Rob Nicholson who was previously holding the defence portfolio, Jason Kenney will move from employment and social development into defence and replacing him is Pierre Poilievre who will also keep his current responsibilities of minster responsible for democratic reform.

Reminds me of a sliding a puzzle, one of those toys I played with as a child that had sliding tiles you had to move around to make a picture with, you could only move one tile to an empty space at one time. There were no additional tiles you could introduce; you just had to work with what you were given. But on the other hand you knew what you had and you worked with it. Even if you knew you had a number of other candidates or tiles you could potentially introduce…

From all the posting and commentary on social media you’d think the Sun News Network (owned by Quebecor Media Inc.) was actually a larger and more reputable news source in Canada. In spite of being decried as Fox News North (also Faux News North), a conservative rag and a right wing soapbox – I’d always see its videos, articles, and reporters flooding my Facebook and Twitter feed. Either through friends sharing, people commenting or retweets it always had a place and an opinion to spew. While I feel for the 200 people who lost their jobs I can’t say the same for their corporation. To put it lightly, I disagreed with many of the stances they took for one reason or another. But what this does is leaves the conservative party with a large hole in their communications to spread their ideas with.

Admittedly they still have right wing newspapers such as the National Post (Owned by Post Media Network Inc.), the Sun Media chain of newspapers and even the Toronto Star to spread their ideas from. More recently Ezra Levant (right wing gospel fanatic, author of the books, “Ethical Oil” and “Groundswell: The Case for Fracking”) threatened to start his own web based media company from his own living room, I guess if there’s a will there is a way. To date I’ve not heard much else of this endeavor.

What does this all mean? To the average voter maybe nothing, maybe everything but I must admit I’ve noticed a lack of right wing news in my Facebook feed. This isn’t to say that many of my well-meaning right leaning conservative friends haven’t tried to take up the slack but without the incredible opinionated headlines with Harper praising, Trudeau bashing and Mulcair ignoring articles of the Sun News Network, it just isn’t the same. In today’s social media world being able to get your ideas, information, and plans out to the public in a timely and urgent matter is of paramount importance. Without it you get flanked by the center Liberals and the Leftist New Democrats.

Of course basing an idea on one little factor in a multitude of issues is rather silly. Currently the heavyweights are battling it out over the terrorist laws, Mike Duffy’s court is already subpoenaing witnesses, Pamela Wallin is being accused of fabricating meetings and misrepresenting trips to the auditor.  Of course on the other side of the political spectrum we seem to be looking a wasteland of any new political ideas worth discussing. It’s almost as if this next election is going to come down to one half dozen of one or six of another.

– Bill Stevenson, Bill’s “Right On” Blog