On Michael Ma's floor crossing and maybe Wiseman won't be ambassador...

I was leaving the pub after meeting my Toronto Sun colleague Brad Hunter for a quick Christmas time pint and catch up when I got the news. As I stepped out onto a frigid Yonge Street, it’s ice covered sidewalks and howling winds, Warren Kinsella sent me a text about Michael Ma.

I’ll be honest, I had no idea who Michael Ma was and had to read the accompanying news release about his floor crossing twice to understand what had just happened. It all put me in mind of what G.K. Chesterton said about journalism.

“Journalism largely consists in saying Lord Jones is dead to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive,” Chesterton wrote.

I only discovered that Michael Ma was a Conservative MP when he crossed the floor to join the Liberals.

Not good news for Poilievre…

There’s plenty of outrage about Ma having voted with the Conservatives all this week, attending their Christmas party on Wednesday night where I’m told he filled the dance floor with colleagues and posed for a photo with Pierre Poilievre.

The next night, Ma was being introduced on the stage at the Liberal Christmas party by Mark Carney.

A hat tip to Global’s Mackenzie Gray for sharing the video on X, he’s worth a follow there.

So Carney is now one seat shy of a majority and Poilievre has had two Conservative MPs defect to the Liberals. Matt Jeneroux meanwhile has announced he is quitting some time in the future, but he’s not showing up to vote. Aaron Gunn, a just elected Conservative MP from British Columbia is seriously considering a run for the leadership of the B.C. Conservative Party.

After Chris D’Entremont’s crossing over to the Liberals, I said that if Poilievre could calm the waters he could survive and comeback from that. With Ma crossing now and these other challenges, that is all up in the air.

We’re just 45 days until the start of the Conservative Party convention where Poilievre will face a leadership review and everything just changed again.

So far, I’ve heard grumblings about his leadership but no one seriously organizing against him. What will be interesting between now and January 29 is whether there is an attempt to organize against the leader.

Carney’s new man in Washington…

Is Mark Wiseman really going to be Canada’s next ambassador to Washington? The opposition has been baying at the idea warning that he’s an affront to Quebec, that he founded the Century Initiative and supports boosting Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100.

There’s an interesting catch in all of this that I’ll get to in a minute after I tell you a bit about him.

I spent much of Wednesday working the phone to get a sense of who Wiseman is. He’s not someone I know, I don’t believe that I’ve ever met him but was able to track down and speak to people who do know him.

He’s described as very smart, at times arrogant, accomplished in the world of investment banking. I spoke to Liberals and Conservatives who mostly had high praise for him in terms of intelligence and abilities.

Some did raise the issue of whether he has the right demeanour to be an ambassador. It’s normally a job that requires a very social person, someone who likes people, a backslapper to a degree.

While there were people who cast doubt on Wiseman’s abilities there, other’s said he’d have no trouble taking out Senators or government officials for a steak at The Capital Grille, the hangout for Trump Republicans.

“He’s a guy who will have no problem wining and dining in Washington,” a Bay Street contact of mine said.

You can read more in my column in the Sun about Wiseman, but here’s what’s odd about all of this.

The current ambassador, Kirsten Hillman announced her departure on Tuesday evening via social media. While Wiseman’s name has been floated, there has been no official confirmation that he has been appointed.

Normally all of this would have been sorted out ahead of time, especially since the Americans have to sign off on his appointment.

In the diplomatic world, it is known as agrément.

The way this would normally work is that Canada’s government would reach out to the Americans ahead of Hillman’s announcement and inform them of the change they would want to make. The Americans would say yes or no to the appointment and then things would be formally announced.

None of that seems to have happened here so whether Wiseman is being appointed, has been approved, is an open question.

For the record, this isn’t a one way street on approvals, it’s standard in the diplomatic world.

A dissenting view on Trump’s National Security Strategy…

So much of the media and commentariat appear to be losing their minds over Trump’s new National Security Strategy and I just don’t get it. There is absolutely nothing in there that he and his team haven’t been saying for the last 18 months.

Being the contrarian that I am, I had to write about this in the Toronto Sun.

The document denounces globalism, climate change and Net Zero called disastrous ideologies, there is a stated desire to use peace through strength to avoid “forever wars” and it declares the age of mass migration over. In sum, this is a rejection of what the world liberal elites have been trying to create and an embrace of everything Donald Trump has been preaching.

The section on Europe is a harsh assessment of where the continent is, but it is hard to argue that it’s not accurate. Whether you agree with where the assessment takes Trump is another matter.

As I wrote the big take-away for Canada is foreign policy is now trade policy in Washington, and tariffs aren’t going away anytime soon.

See you in March Doug…

I ran into Ontario Premier Doug Ford in the halls of Queen’s Park yesterday. We said hello and a quick Merry Christmas as the legislative session at the provincial legislature was winding up.

Not sure when I will see him again though, the Ford government announced on Thursday that they won’t return to the legislature until March 23, well past the originally scheduled date of February 17.

I wrote more about that here, but for everyone outraged at they sat just 51 days at Queen’s Park this past year - which does seem really low, consider these nuggets of information at the end of my piece on the long recess.

For the record, Alberta’s legislature also sat 51 days this year, Quebec has 66 days on their current sitting calendar and B.C. 67. Up in Ottawa, the federal Parliament sat for 69 days.