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After months of weighty policy shifts by Premier Kathleen Wynne, Ontarians appear to be warming up to their unloved Liberal government, according to a new poll from the Innovative Research Group.

The long-governing Liberals have trailed the opposition Progressive Conservatives in a number of polls since last summer but with less than a year before the next provincial election, the gap between has closed and they are almost tied in public support, according to pollster Greg Lyle; 30 per cent of Ontarians say they would vote PC compared with 27 per cent who would vote Liberal.

The poll follows a number of feel-good announcements in April and May in which Ms. Wynne announced a tax on foreign buyers to cool an overheated housing market, the move to a $15 minimum wage, a balanced budget with a new pharmacare plan, a basic-income pilot project and a 25-per-cent cut to hydro bills.

Globe editorial: Why Kathleen Wynne has become a great NDP premier

Former Liberal heavyweights have suggested in recent months that the party could be staring at defeat next summer if Ms. Wynne stays on as leader. However, while Ms. Wynne remains unpopular with the majority of Ontarians, Mr. Lyle says his polling shows paths for the Liberals to win again. By next summer, the Grits will have been in power for 15 years.

What were seeing is that the pool of people open to the Liberals is starting to move, Mr. Lyle told The Globe and Mail. That doesnt mean that theyve got them, but theyve got a lead in party identification and the number of people open to considering them is growing.

Despite lagging in the polls, the Liberal brand remains the most popular in Ontario, with 34 per cent of those polled identifying as Liberals. The governing partys base has also grown over the past few months, with 25 per cent of Ontarians disagreeing that its time to change government nearly equal to the 27 per cent who say they are hostile with the government.

The Liberals are also in the lead across much of the Greater Toronto Area, after months of wobbly support in the partys seat-rich heartland. The Tories lead everywhere else in Ontario, with commanding leads in southwestern and south-central Ontario.

Since November, the Liberals base support has grown, while the number of Ontarians mad at the government has shrunk. Thats good news for Ms. Wynne, according to Mr. Lyle the pollster for former Tory premier Mike Harris.

Anger directed at Ms. Wynne has also dropped. While she ranks third when asked who would make the best premier, after PC Leader Patrick Brown and the NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, the number of people angry at the Premier has dropped five points to 41 per cent. Admittedly, thats still quite unpopular, according to Mr. Lyle.

While the numbers are improving somewhat for Ms. Wynne, Mr. Lyle said he was surprised by the incremental increase. Whats striking to me is that the policies were so dramatic and the gains have been relatively so small, he said.

What may account for the discrepancy, Mr. Lyle said, is the governments inability to form a narrative that has gained currency among Ontarians. While the governments announcements on housing and minimum wage have been well regarded, it hasnt led to a more cohesive story. In an interview with The Globe in June, Ms. Wynne summed up that narrative in one word: Fairness.

And while Mr. Browns party might be ahead in the polls, more than half of Ontarians say they dont know enough about him to form an opinion. Thats a problem also facing Ms. Horwath, as an increasing number of Ontarians have said they dont know much about her, either.

Follow Justin Giovannetti on Twitter: @justincgio

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Ontario survey shows rise in support for Liberals a year out from election - The Globe and Mail

Nationals senator John Williams also says Tony Abbott needs to just fit into the team and be a team player. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

National party senator John Williams has warned the Liberal party that a plebiscite on marriage equality is part of the Coalition agreement, signed by Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce.

The agreement was signed when Turnbull took the leadership from Tony Abbott in September 2015 and Williams said it was part of the deal for National party support.

I know that it is in the Coalition agreement, a signed agreement between Nats and Liberals by Barnaby Joyce and Malcolm Turnbull, Williams said.

The Coalition agreement is signed by every incoming Liberal and National party leader. In the last agreement, Turnbull agreed for the water portfolio to go back to the agriculture portfolio with Joyce as minister, which happened immediately. The agreement also states there will be no policy move to a carbon price and no change to the definition of marriage without a plebiscite.

Williams chastised the defence industry minister and leader of the government, Christopher Pyne, for telling his moderate Liberal colleagues that marriage equality might be resolved sooner than you think, a boast soon scotched by Turnbull.

Williams said if the Nick Xenophon team or Labor had supported the plebiscite, the issue of same-sex marriage could have been resolved by now.

But instead these issues keep bubbling along and get so much media attention and Chris Pyne shouldnt say those things, Williams said.

He was worried the ongoing Liberal division would risk marginal seat holders such as fellow National MP Michelle Landry in Capricornia in Queensland. Landry holds the seat by a margin of just 0.8% and Williams said her seat creates the one-seat majority that keeps the Coalition in power.

Im annoyed with the Liberals because everyone knows division is death and they are so divided every time Tony Abbott makes a statement publicly, he said.

We need to concentrate on their job, which is to work for betterment of all Australia.

Williams reminded Abbott that Coalition MPs had been team players when he was prime minister but he would not give advice about whether Abbott should leave parliament after the Guardian Essential poll found 43% thought Abbott should resign.

I think what Tony needs to do is just simply be more of a team player, as we were with Tony when he was prime minister, Williams told ABC earlier.

I certainly was. We had a couple of disagreements on the odd occasion but I think Tony needs to just fit into the team and be a team player. What he does in the future is his decision.

He said the continual division made it impossible for the government to talk about its positive messages such as budget commitments on inland rail, roads and education.

These things cant get any light of day because of this division, Williams said.

Originally posted here:
Nationals senator reminds Liberals same-sex marriage plebiscite part of their deal - The Guardian

By Rob Gillies

TORONTO The Canadian government is going to apologize and give millions to a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who pleaded guilty to killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15, with Canadas Supreme Court later ruling that officials had interrogated him under oppressive circumstances.

An official familiar with the deal said Tuesday that Omar Khadr will receive $10.5 million. The official was not authorized to discuss the deal publicly before the announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity. The government and Khadrs lawyers negotiated the deal last month.

The Canadian-born Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. troops following a firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of an American special forces medic, U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer. Khadr, who was suspected of throwing the grenade that killed Speer, was taken to Guantanamo and ultimately charged with war crimes by a military commission.

He pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges that included murder and was sentenced to eight years plus the time he had already spent in custody. He returned to Canada two years later to serve the remainder of his sentence and was released in May 2015 pending an appeal of his guilty plea, which he said was made under duress.

Omar Khadr spent 10 years in Guantanamo Bay. His case received international attention after some dubbed him a child soldier.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2010 that Canadian intelligence officials obtained evidence from Khadr under oppressive circumstances, such as sleep deprivation, during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, and then shared that evidence with U.S officials.

Khadr was the youngest and last Western detainee held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

His lawyers filed a $20 million wrongful imprisonment lawsuit against the Canadian government, arguing the government violated international law by not protecting its own citizen and conspired with the U.S. in its abuse of Khadr. A spokesman for the justice minister and the prime ministers office didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

The widow of Speer and another American soldier blinded by the grenade in Afghanistan filed a wrongful death and injury lawsuit against Khadr in 2014 fearing Khadr might get his hands on money from his $20 million wrongful imprisonment lawsuit. A U.S. judge granted $134.2 million in damages in 2015, but the plaintiffs acknowledged then that there was little chance they would collect any of the money from Khadr because he lives in Canada.

Khadrs lawyers have long said he was pushed into war by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, whose family stayed with Osama bin Laden briefly when Omar Khadr was a boy. Khadrs Egyptian-born father was killed in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter shelled the house where he was staying with senior al-Qaida operatives.

After his 2015 release from prison in Alberta, Omar Khadr apologized to the families of the victims. He said he rejects violent jihad and wants a fresh start to finish his education and work in health care. He currently resides in an apartment in Edmonton, Alberta.

Read more:
Trudeau Liberals to pay Omar Khadr $10.5M for suffering at Guantanamo - National Post

Paul Chabot is a native Californian who stood for Congress last year as a Republican, in a district near Los Angeles. After his defeat, he decided the only option was to move to Texas.

Californias become a lost cause, he said. I was born and raised there when it was a Republican state. Ronald Reagan was from there, Nixon was from there, we had great schools back in the 70s and 80s, low crime, great paying jobs. Now its a 180, its a complete opposite of that.

I lost to a very liberal Democrat that the people elected and I came to the conclusion that you cant help people who dont want to help themselves. That really was the end of it for us in California. We realised then that the majority of the people around us no longer shared the same values that my wife and I believe in.

Chabot, his wife Brenda and their four young children relocated to Collin County, which covers some of the most affluent and manicured suburbs of Dallas and where a four-bed home can be yours for under $350,000. And all 38 elected officials, from the sheriff to the district attorney to the tax assessor-collector, are Republicans.

In California we always jokingly said, If this state goes to hell well end up moving to Texas. And a lot of people say it and some people actually do it, Chabot said.

He is now a player in a long-running and freshly escalated ideological and economic battle between Americas most populous liberal and conservative states.

A new adoption law that critics describe as anti-LGBTQ has prompted California to ban state-funded trips to Texas. Chabots strategy is quite the opposite. In May he launched Conservative Move slogan: Helping Families Move Right a company to help fellow sufferers flee their liberal hellscapes and find asylum in the warm, red glow of suburban north Texas.

Its not the same state it was 30, 40, 50 years ago. So you have a base who are frustrated with California and want out

The 43-year-old said the response has been fast and furious: about a thousand expressions of interest, three-quarters of them from Californians.

The people who are contacting us are very upset with state politics, he said. They might have been a lifelong Californian like I was, but theyre saying the state doesnt represent me any more, its not the same state it was 30, 40, 50 years ago. So you have a base of people who are just frustrated with California and want out.

A couple of years ago, he said, he saw a news article that declared the fast-growing county seat of McKinney to be the finest place to live in the US.

As a Californian what I love here is that theres no state income tax, the politics here supports the second amendment, they dont support sanctuary cities or any of that stuff that weve dealt with in California and Texas is very tough on crime. They also have excellent schools where we are, Chabot said.

He is surrounded by Californian ex-pats, he said: My neighbour across the street, my mail man, the guy at Home Depot in the plumbing department, the police officer I met in a coffee shop.

According to a Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) analysis of American Community Survey data, 502,978 people older than 25 moved from California to Texas between 2005 and 2015. Some 290,214 people went the other way. Texas was the top destination for Californians, and vice-versa.

With 27 million Texas residents and 39 million in California, the figures suggest that roughly 1.1% of Texans over 25 moved to California and 1.3% of Californians moved to Texas over that decade. That hardly depicts a flood, or a clear winner in a rivalry that has come to symbolise the growing divide between right and left in the country as a whole. But it is a philosophical gulf that will become even more entrenched geographically if Chabots business flourishes.

There is scant evidence that politics is a main migration factor. Hans Johnson, of the PPIC, said the data indicates economic and family reasons are key drivers.

Housing prices in California have escalated quite rapidly over the last five years and that of course will push more people out of the state, he said.

As a Sacramento Bee headline put it in March: California exports its poor to Texas, other states, while wealthier people move in.

When he was governor of Texas, as the oil and gas boom helped the state prosper despite the recession of the late 2000s, Rick Perry voiced radio advertisements seeking to woo Californian businesses an effort that the Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, termed barely a fart.

They can laugh at Californias travel ban to Texas but itll be more than a travel ban from one state

With a Republican in the White House, California now makes an appealing scapegoat for Texas politicians who fired up their base by disparaging Barack Obama.

Its funny how the very state that is so adamantly against keeping terrorists out of our country they oppose the presidents travel ban now wants to keep Californians out of Texas, a spokesman for Texas attorney general Ken Paxton told the Houston Chronicle. I guess thats California logic.

But an energy industry downturn has hurt Texas economy, and though Arizona and North Carolina endured boycotts in recent years for legislation perceived as discriminatory, Texas is likely to pass a bathroom bill this summer to limit restroom access for transgender people. In protest at a new immigration law, the American Immigration Lawyers Association has switched its 2018 conference from the Dallas area to San Francisco.

They can laugh at Californias travel ban to Texas but itll be more than a travel ban from one state, said Sylvia Garcia, a Democratic state senator from Houston. Itll be more states and it will be more companies who do not want to relocate here and it will be more conferences and more visitors who wont want to come here.

While Texas lawmakers fulminate against liberal values with the rallying cry, Dont California our Texas!, the states biggest cities have turned bluer, most obviously Austin, where Silicon Valley giants such as Google and Facebook have a significant presence. Last November, Hillary Clinton secured more than 54% of the vote in Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, even though Donald Trump won Texas easily.

Tanya Santillan, a 30-year-old attorney originally from northern California, moved to Houston last year from Washington DC. Especially as a Mexican American in the current environment, she said, she is cautious about discussing politics in her adopted state, but Houston has been a pleasant surprise.

You always come in with a preconceived notion that its going to be super-conservative, maybe more racism, a lot more backward-thinking, more religious. You dont necessarily expect for there to be as much diversity as there is, and I think Houston, its a bubble inside of Texas, people are a lot more progressive. I think maybe if I lived in a smaller town than Houston my experience would be completely different.

When I first mentioned to some of my friends that I was moving to Houston, they just kind of asked, like, Why?'

Santillan has a pragmatic attitude. This is where you get the most for your money, she said, and the political climate is not enough to disincentivise you to move there.

Kyle Loftis has a similar view. The 34-year-old grew up in southern California and lived in San Francisco before moving to Houston four years ago. He works for a parking company and said the transition was smooth.

When I first mentioned to some of my friends that I was moving to Houston, they just kind of asked, like, Why? Why would you move to Texas? he said.

There were a few jokes about Texas being gun country and all that kind of stuff, but nothing too bad, really. I would say it was just more of a little bit of confusion, like, Why are you moving out there? You can get a job here.

But the Bay Area is notoriously expensive. My biggest thing was just the affordability. The cost of living is just far lower in Texas, Loftis said.

Another transplant from the Bay Area to Houston, Chris Pedersen, a 34-year-old who works in the oil and gas industry said the cost of living in California was getting ridiculous. Its become very problematic.

My grandma lives in a two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse [20 miles south of San Francisco] which just got appraised for a million dollars. Its crazy. We just closed on a house actually a week ago, were moving in as we speak, and its half of that, and its a great neighborhood, great house. Theres no way we would have been able to afford it in California.

Do I agree with all the Texas politics, no. But do I agree with all the Californian politics, not at all. Youll have your challenges wherever.

Read this article:
Your place or mine? Texas liberals and California conservatives swap states - The Guardian

It is the unwarranted invasion of individual privacy which is reprehended, and to be, so far as possible, prevented. There are persons who may reasonable claim as a right, protection from the notoriety entailed by being made the victims of journalistic enterprise.

Samuel D. Warren, Louis D. Brandeis, December 15, 1890, Harvard Law Review

It is Fourth of July time. It is time to remember two of the most important constitutional protections that we need to worry about now more than ever: The First Amendment protection of the free press and the right to privacy, two issues that seem to, but actually do not, conflict with one another.

The excerpt from the law review article above was written 127 years ago by Professors Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis Brandeis (the latter became one of the great Supreme Court justices). It provided the intellectual foundation for the right to privacy protection that, 75years later, the U.S. Supreme Court found existed in our constitution implicitly but not explicitly.

The right to privacy has become an important value for liberals in recent years. So how is it possible that with all reviews about the new documentary that focuses on the Hogan case, Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, directed by the respected Brian Knappenberger (which I have not yet seen), the right to privacy issues involved in the case are virtually ignored?

Meanwhile, the reviews almost exclusively address concerns by liberals that the $140 million verdict against Gawker, which was put out of business due to the size of the verdict, and the way it was financed, represents a threat to First Amendment and press freedoms.

The documentary is largely about the case filed by Terry Jean Bollea, better known by his WWE name, Hulk Hogan. Gawker obtained a copy of Bollea having sex with a woman in his home and posted it online. Bollea won his huge verdict against Gawker because the jury believed this video published by Gawker, while literally true, was not about a newsworthy act by a public figure, but rather, a private act by a private person.

Thus, the jury voted that Gawker was not justified in violating Bolleas privacy rights by posting the video online and embarrassing him for no newsworthy reason. They rejected the notion that Gawker was entitled to any First Amendment protections. Of course, the jury verdict can be debated. There may be too much subjectivity in the legal standards, such as what is newsworthy or of public interest.

Meanwhile, rather than engaging in a healthy and much-needed debate as to where First Amendment protections end and the right to privacy begins, liberal reviewers and commentators have focused a lot their attention on attacking Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur (and early investor in Facebook and PayPal), who provided the financing to Bollea to allow him to sue and afford the costs of the litigation to protect his privacy rights. Without Thiel, Bollea could not have afforded to fight for his right to privacy and win.

Thiel happens to be a conservative, libertarian and a Trump supporter. His politics are always mentioned in the reviews and critiques of his financing of Bolleas case.If he were a liberal Democrat, would the criticisms of Thiel by these rights be the same? I doubt it. (I am, by the way, a liberal Democrat and proud of it).

I certainly worry about small news organizations on the right and left that are vulnerable to expensive defense costs when lawsuits are filed against them, even though what was published was true and accurate, but, so does Thiel.

He told the New York Times in an interview that he has donated money to the Committee to Protect Journalists and stated: I refuse to believe that journalism means massive privacy violations. I think much more highly of journalists than that. Its precisely because I respect journalists that I do not believe they are endangered by fighting back against Gawker [to protect privacy rights].

Liberals should be able to care about protecting both First Amendment and media freedoms as well as privacy rights. It is hypocritical to support financial backing by wealthy liberals in cases we like but attack the motives of financiers in cases we dont like.

Lanny Davis is co-founder of both the Washington law firm Davis Goldberg Galper PLLC and Trident DMG, a strategic media firm specializing in crisis management. He served as special counsel to former President Clinton from 1996 to 1998 and is a regular columnist for The Hill newspaper. He is a friend of Peter Thiel.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

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Liberals can't just rally for free press and ignore privacy rights | TheHill - The Hill (blog)