Clamouring for Clyde

A group has cropped up on Facebook to campaign for Clyde Wells, the former Newfoundland Premier, to fill the new vacancy on the Supreme Court of Canada.

It's spearheaded by Ed Hollett, a former aide to Wells, who runs a well-read Liberal blog called the Sir Robert Bond Papers.

The Star's Tonda MacCharles (who is a Newfoundlander, and has noted that there's never been a Newfoundlander on the bench) speculated about this when she appeared on CTV's Mike Duffy Live to talk about the Supreme Court vacancy created this week by the retirement of Justice Michel Bastarache.

Wells is most remembered for his role in helping to unravel the Meech Lake constitutional accord in 1990 (though it died officially in Manitoba, at the hands of aboriginal MLA Elijah Harper).

That other Harper, Stephen, was also a foe of Meech Lake - a fact he doesn't broadcast too often to Quebec these days. 

Now that the Prime Minister seems fixated on the idea of getting more seats in Quebec in the next election, perhaps enough to form a majority, it seems doubtful he'd appoint a man who has come to symbolize rejection of Quebec's desire to be a distinct society in Canada. And a Liberal, at that.

Crybaby federalism

Belatedly, perhaps, it's time to welcome Maclean's columnist Paul Wells back to Ottawa and send all readers here clicking to his excellent blog post today on the Ontario-Ottawa feud.

It's called "Crybaby federalism," if that gives you a hint of the tone. Wells has been away for most of the past year on assignment in Paris. Now he's returned to find the national capital more childishly bullying than it was before he left -- or at least that's how I read this latest entry.

He also urges readers to check out the Conservative website to see just how low a party can go in picking a fight with Canada's largest province.

I don't think I can ever remember a government poking ridicule at a provincial premier, as a matter of official communication strategy. And I am at a similar loss to suggest why anyone would think this is a good idea -- politically, or on any plane.

In fact, I keep wondering -- all those Tim Hortons folk out there, the hockey moms and dads, the supposed target audience for all this negative campaigning by the Tories  -- wouldn't they send their kids to bed without dinner if they made of fun of people the way the Conservatives are doing with Dion and McGuinty?