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A daily look inside Canadian politics and power. | | | | |  | | By Nick Taylor-Vaisey | Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Nick Welcome to the Ottawa Playbook. It's speculation season in the capital, so we tease out the odds of a fall election (not likely) and a summer trip north for POTUS. Also, NDP MP MATTHEW GREEN submits his summertime reads. And HBD to a certain Ottawa mayoral candidate. Did someone forward Ottawa Playbook your way? Click here to sign up for your own edition. It’s free! |  | DRIVING THE DAY | |
THE S-WORD — Give any journalist or pundit 30 seconds of free time in the summer, and they're almost guaranteed to speculate about the timing of the next federal election. That's just how Ottawa brains work. In the middle of July, almost anyone can concoct a rationale for a fall election.
It's silly, but it's fun, and Playbook is contractually obliged to play along. Even if it means being a buzzkill spoilsport. Which is where this is all headed. — Where it all started: Conservative pollster, campaigner and general rabble rouser NICK KOUVALIS kicked up a fuss with a single tweet . "Based on what Trudeau has been up to lately, I believe they're preparing for an election this fall," he said. The Hill Times indulged the perennial conversation with a Monday morning story that quoted a couple of Liberal "insiders" who wouldn't bet against another early election: "Some Liberal sources interviewed for this article said it’s highly speculative that an election could be called in the fall, but did say that some within the party people are talking about this possibility." Even though it's mostly Conservatives who are talking about a vote, Tory MP MICHAEL BARRETT ran with the notion that Liberals are raring to go. "The Trudeau Liberals should be talking about helping Canadians," he tweeted alongside a short rant recorded on a deck. "So why are they talking about an early election?" Nice try. — What's the case for an election? Here it is in one sentence: Liberals could go to the polls before the worst effects of snarled supply chains, unwieldy inflation and interest rate hikes hit people where it hurts most — and catch a new Tory leader flat-footed. — And the case against? Again, one sentence: Liberals would be crazy to seek a fourth term with a recession looming and unpredictable Covid variants lurking, and well-funded Tories will unite quickly behind a talented new leader — like, say, PIERRE POILIEVRE. Plus, we all just went to the polls 10 months ago. — What's the buzz? Playbook asked a sampling of political pundits across the spectrum to chime in. We didn't ask for an explanation, only an up/down vote. Here's how that went. → On the 'YES' side: STEPHEN TAYLOR → On the 'NO' side: DAVID TARRANT, JORDAN LEICHNITZ, DENNIS MATTHEWS, SHIFRAH GADAMSETTI, MATTHEW DUBÉ, GREG MACEACHERN, ERIC DILLANE, COLE HOGAN, SCOTT REID, SIMONE RACANELLI, GARRY KELLER, SHAKIR CHAMBERS, BERT CHEN and LIAM DALY. That's about as close as you can get to consensus in this town. Then again, we always have PAUL WELLS's Rules of Politics in the back of our mind. The second rule got us thinking: "If everyone in Ottawa knows something, it’s not true." But then we remembered the first rule: "For any given situation, Canadian politics will tend toward the least exciting possible outcome." | 
U.S. President Joe Biden. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | POTUS WATCH — If we can't speculate about a third trip to the hustings since 2019, you'll forgive us for turning to another talker: JOE BIDEN's first visit to Canada as president, scheduled at June's Summit of the Americas for "the coming months." We've heard whispers of a Toronto stop, and multiple sources have spotted suspiciously lengthy motorcades rolling through the streets of Canada's biggest city. Only one man in the western hemisphere merits an entourage like that, and they appeared to be in training mode. — The big question: When? If it's slated for the warmer months, there's only a tiny window. Playbook was reminded over coffee that Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU typically takes his summer vacation in early August. Last year, not even the lure of an opportunistic election robbed PMJT of his treasured time off. Trudeau took a breather from July 31 to Aug. 10, before the writs were drawn up several days later. Biden will also likely take some time away in August, after a madhouse schedule of international travel in June and July. Last year, he scheduled two weeks of vacay before cutting it short, largely to deal with Afghanistan's fall to the Taliban. — Big events: Pope Francis's three-stop Canadian tour makes July 24–29 a no-go zone. And then a series of annual Toronto festivals snarl traffic in the city. Caribana dominates the August long weekend. The Canadian National Exhibition opens Aug. 19 and runs to Labor Day on Sept. 5, when Biden will surely be celebrating the American worker somewhere stateside. The Toronto International Film Festival preoccupies the city from Sept. 8–18. The House of Commons is in session at 11 a.m. on Sept. 19. Biden will at that point likely be thinking more about midterm elections than Canadian receptions. Worth noting: German Chancellor OLAF SCHOLZ will also book some time in Canada this August to "secure key partnerships on energy security, critical minerals and clean technology, and accelerate both countries’ transition toward green and sustainable economies." — Choose your own adventure: If Trudeau takes his traditional 10-ish days off to start next month, and Biden sticks to a redo of last year's planned mid-August break, that leaves the last week of August for a Toronto sojourn. POTUS could even stick around town for the annual CNE air show, where he could throw on some aviators and grin at the F-35 demonstration team ripping through the skies above Lake Ontario. Or he could fly north right after Labor Day, just in time to party with Hollywood celebs as they descend on Toronto for TIFF. Or he could snub us a bit longer, and save the hoopla for 2023. Do you have intel on Biden's eventual trip north? Your secret's safe with us and every single one of our readers. Drop us a line! — Oh, the places he's gone: Canadians have come to expect that presidents honor their northerly neighbor's kinship with their first international trip. Back in 2016, Trudeau welcomed then-veep Biden with a state dinner. But he hasn't returned as president. Here's a list of all the other countries graced with POTUS's presence so far: the United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Spain, Israel, Saudi Arabia. — Yes, we know: Not every president's first trip touches our soil. GEORGE W. BUSH, for example, favored his southerly NAFTA neighbor. Not like we held a grudge.
| | For your radar | | MONSEF WATCH — Former Peterborough MP and federal Cabmin MARYAM MONSEF dropped a few more hints about her future Wednesday. "Together we can rise above negativity, apathy and hopelessness by galvanizing & surrounding ourselves with people who are solution-focused," she tweeted. "People who truly want to have an impact locally & globally with causes that matter most to them. I believe We have this in us." — Something's afoot: "I’m really excited for what comes next," she added, with a throw to a refurbished website (which, as Playbook observed recently, had its domain data updated on June 21). "Be the first to know when we launch." — Local scoop: kawarthaNOW, a Peterborough publication, got the down-low last Friday on what's next for the former politician. Monsef hosted a hush-hush event in downtown Peterborough where she let 125 attendees in on the secret behind her new ONWARD initiative. “It was an opportunity to connect with people that I have missed very much,” Monsef told kawarthaNOW. “We had a special dialogue about community, leadership, issues, and resolutions. Our dialogue was an antidote to the tensions and divisions and hate in our community and beyond.” — And it includes a podcast: Buried in her website's metadata is this nugget: "Maryam Monsef is a globally recognized feminist, leader, and change maker. This Afghan-Canadian activist rose from refugee, to community-organizer, to cabinet minister. She now connects, inspires and empowers women leaders through her website, speeches, workshops, retreats and her 'Onward with Maryam Monsef' podcast." — No more politics: Stand down, all you politicos who recently mused about Monsef's appetite for a run for Peterborough mayor or Ontario Liberal leader.
| | TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS | | — PM Trudeau is taking a personal day today. If he's looking for a fun time in the neighborhood tonight, the French Embassy a short walk from Rideau Cottage is hosting its annual Bastille Day reception. 9 a.m. (10 a.m. AT) Infrastructure Minister DOMINIC LEBLANC and Fredericton MP JENICA ATWIN will make an infrastructure announcement alongside New Brunswick transportation minister JILL GREEN, Fredericton mayor KATE ROGERS, and Under One Sky executive director PATSY MCKINNEY. 10:30 a.m. NDP leader JAGMEET SINGH is in Toronto to meet with the Ontario Nurses' Association. Singh has called on the feds to increase the Canada Health Transfer. 11 a.m. Indigenous Services Minister PATTY HAJDU will sign a regional education agreement with 22 First Nations communities in Quebec. She'll join GHISLAIN PICARD, Regional Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador; JOHN MARTIN, Chief of Gesgapegiag and Chief Responsible for Education; and KAKSENNÉNHAWE SKY-DEER, Grand Chief of Kahnawà:ke. 11 a.m. Sport Minister PASCALE ST-ONGE is in Montreal to announce funding for Quebec festivals and cultural events. 11 a.m. The Senate Committee on Human Rights will release a report on forced and coerced sterilization. 12 p.m. (11 a.m. CT) Transport Minister OMAR ALGHABRA is in Regina to announce new funding "to improve rail safety and efficiency in Regina and southern Saskatchewan." 12 p.m. (1 p.m. AT) Official Languages Minister GINETTE PETITPAS TAYLOR is in Moncton to announce support for the Boys and Girls Club. 1 p.m. (10 a.m. PT) Conservative leadership candidate LESLYN LEWIS holds an event at the Glacier View Inn in Haines Junction, Yukon. 2:30 p.m. Bank of Canada Governor TIFF MACKLEM will participate in a webinar hosted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. 3:45 p.m. (1:45 p.m. MT) Agriculture Minister MARIE-CLAUDE BIBEAU is in Calgary to announce funding for research on and implementation of "best practices to reduce greenhouse emissions in Canada's agriculture and agri-food sector."
| | PAPER TRAIL | | LOONIE LOOKOUT — Look for OSCAR PETERSON’s face the next time you grab a handful of change. The famed Canadian pianist is being celebrated with two new loonies from the Royal Canadian Mint, ZI-ANN LUM reports. “The design would depict Mr. Peterson playing the piano, above which are musical notes and chord symbols from his Hymn to Freedom,” reads a description listed in the most recent edition of Gazette II. — Survey says: The mint asked 2,513 adult respondents for their, ahem, two cents, on the Peterson coin. They found broad support: 93 percent of those surveyed found it appealing. That high support was only slightly dwarfed by two other loonie designs the mint asked respondents to review, too. (Playbook asks: What about GLENN GOULD?) Ninety-six percent found an upcoming new coin marking the 175th anniversary of the birth of ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, and celebrating the Scottish-born inventor’s non-phone innovations appealing. — Because hockey: The same pool of respondents reserved their highest praise for a proposed design commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1972 summit series. That design, as described in the Gazette, “would depict two members of Team Canada skating in the foreground, behind whom would appear the stylized maple leaf that appeared on the Team Canada jersey in 1972.” The 37 team members’ jersey numbers would appear on the outer ring of the coin, including the initials of coaches HARRY SINDEN and JOHN FERGUSON.
| | SUMMERTIME READS | | Today’s picks come from NDP MP MATTHEW GREEN: — “Capitalism and Dispossession: Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad,” edited by DAVID P. THOMAS and VELDON COBURN "This is a comprehensive set of case studies outlining the parallels between Canada's extractionary settler state economy domestically and its foreign policy promoting the same abroad." — "A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency,” by SETH KLEIN "A timely reminder of how Canada's wartime crisis response offered state interventions to match the scale and scope of WWII and how Canada must offer the same 'wartime approach' to head off catastrophic climate change." — "Fired Up About Capitalism," by TOM MALLESON "This short primer offers an important rebuttal to the myth that capitalism is the default economy of democracy. This book provides a critical analysis of the market failures of capitalism in talking about inequality, environmental collapse, and a pathway to rebuilding a social democracy in Canada." Send us your reading suggestions — your brain food and your guilty pleasure! We'll share them in the Playbook newsletter. Check out our comprehensive list of summer reads, which grows every week. Find out what's on House Speaker ANTHONY ROTA's bookshelf. Copy and paste the reading list of PMO bench boss KATIE TELFORD. And don't miss Tory MP ADAM CHAMBERS's picks.
| | MEDIA ROOM | | — Top of POLITICO this morning: The one word Biden won’t say in Israel. — HANNAH ROBERTS in Rome reports: Italy on the brink as Draghi’s government faces collapse. — The Star's STEPHANIE LEVITZ is on the This Matters pod to discuss: What’s next for the Conservative leadership race. — In Policy magazine, former Senator ANDRÉ PRATTE says the question for Conservatives is this: “Do they want their party to resemble the American Republican Party, or do they want a truly Canadian political party, founded on core Canadian, conservative values?” — As for the Conservative race in Alberta, HOWARD ANGLIN writes in The Hub: The Alberta Sovereignty Act is nothing but a sideshow scam. — The National Post's CHRIS NARDI tells the tale of Environment Minister STEVEN GUILBEAULT's National Train Tour That Never Was. — The Hill Times with the scoop that Liberal MP RUBY SAHOTA is considering a bid for Brampton mayor. PATRICK BROWN is still mulling a run for re-election. — There's one hopeful sign for the Fed on inflation. Really. POLITICO’s VICTORIA GUIDA explains. — The Decibel pod this morning features MARK RENDELL making sense of the Bank of Canada's supersized rate hike. — Add this new feature from CHRISTINA FRANGOU to your required reading on medically assisted death. For Chatelaine, she tells the story of 54-year-old MADELINE, one of more than 1.4 million Canadians with disabilities who live in poverty. “She has government funding to die in comfort, but not enough to live at the same standard.” — CHANDRAN NAIR, CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow: Pope’s visit opens door to examine Canada’s role in global white privilege.
| | PROZONE | | If you’re a POLITICO Pro , don’t miss our latest policy newsletter: In a word: Wowza. In other news for s:
— WTO OKs Canada to retaliate against certain future U.S. duties.
— Russia and Ukraine reach ‘basic’ deal on Black Sea grain ships, Turkey says.
— Bitcoin miners feel the heat as crypto prices plunge.
— The man fighting Ukraine’s cyber war.
— Amazon gave Ring videos to police without owners’ permission.
— Macklem goes big and warns of more hikes to come.
— Biden’s spyware conundrum on Mideast trip.
| | PLAYBOOKERS | | Birthdays: HBD to Minister of Tourism RANDY BOISSONNAULT, B.C. MLA KATRINA CHEN and former Senator JIM MUNSON. Also celebrating today: Mayoral candidate MARK SUTCLIFFE, journalist GRAYDON CARTER, former publisher RUSSELL MILLS, London Mayor ED HOLDER and former MNA LUCIE CHARLEBOIS. Send birthdays to ottawaplaybook@politico.com. Movers and shakers: Defense Minister ANITA ANAND has been awarded the United Nations Association in Canada 2022 Global Citizen Award. “In all her roles, Minister Anand commits herself to ensuring that no one is left behind.” UNA-Canada will present the award this fall. The Institute for Research on Public Policy welcomes new directors: VIRGINIA MEARNS and RAY WILLIAMS. Ottawa MPP JOEL HARDEN has announced he will not be running to lead the Ontario NDP. Alberta UCP candidate DANIELLE SMITH, announcing special guest THEO FLEURY at a fundraiser tonight. Spotted: MONTREAL, No. 9 on Time Out’s list of 53 best cities in the world in 2022 … Minister of Crown–Indigenous Relations MARC MILLER in Washington, "to meet with colleagues from the United States and Mexico to ensure we are working together in addressing shared obligations towards Indigenous Peoples." CTV’s GLEN MCGREGOR with a travel report from Vancouver … Former U.S. ambassador BRUCE HEYMAN with Chinook salmon and … his first halibut. The Royal Canadian Air Force, looking for a publisher of a 300-page manuscript on "senior leadership between 1920 and 1964." Send Playbookers tips to ottawaplaybook@politico.com.
| | TRIVIA | | Wednesday’s answer: Live Aid was held on Saturday, July 13, 1985. Here’s Queen’s concert from that day. Props to TISHA ASHTON, NANCI WAUGH , GUY SKIPWORTH, DOUG RICE, SCOTT LOHNES, STEPHEN KAROL, JOSEPH CHAMOUN, JACQUES STURGEON, WALTER ROBINSON, AMY BOUGHNER, BRAM ABRAMSON and ROBERT MCDOUGALL. Today’s question: Who retired from the Senate on this day in 2021? Send your answers to ottawaplaybook@politico.com Have a petition you want signed? A cause you’re promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness amongst this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Alejandra Waase to find out how: awaase@politico.com. Playbook wouldn’t happen without Luiza Ch. Savage and Sue Allan and editor Ben Pauker.
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