Trudeau is the most divisive PM Canada has seen in decades. Maybe ever. The Liberal party of today is not the Liberal party of Chretien, Martin etc. But at this point in our history, most political parties are a bit of a mess. No party has any real vision for Canada. Most politicians want to get elected for their own self-interest, not to make Canada better. Which is supposed to be the point of public office.
"Vendors provide services to the public, and shouldn’t discriminate against individuals or groups".
"Canadians will not support a government that seeks so transparently to divide it [sic]".
Our Covid response shows that all the old rules are inapplicable, as long as the media is willing to give the government their support, explicit or tacit.
Very well written. it seems to me that outsiders must consider us the most racist country in the world and that is certainly not what we are. However, I'm really wondering about our PM!
I consider myself a conservative who supports social programs. I have, in the past. Voted Liberal. I cannot explain how much a cannot stand JT and how much I think he is a useless leader who is trying to destroy everything that I think Canada stands for. Perhaps he isn’t doing it deliberately. Maybe he’s just too stupid to realize. I feel sorry for the old “Liberals” like Dan McTeague who were the Liberals I voted for - he and his ilk have nothing complimentary to say about JT and I don’t know who they would vote for now.
No need to explain. Many of us can relate ;-) I think he's just in it for himself and can't figure out why people don't agree that what's good for Justin isn't necessarily good for the country.
Central Bankers, past and present, aren't going to be popular over the next few years as they rightfully or wrongfully bear the blame for the inflation mess.
From an outsider's perspective, Canada is definitely hyper racist. Where a hijab gets you fired, advertising eggs from your farm in English gets you fined, where a respected Catholic religious leader (Chanoine Groulx) preaches that the Jews were responsible for Jesus' crucifixion, where a Quebec premier (Maurice Duplessis) gets elected by blaming his voters problems on the Jews, where hospital services in English are denied if you live in the wrong area, etc etc. Let’s not forget the treatment of First Nations members, the ongoing cold civil war between French and English, the fact that for a while in the 1920s or 1930s or both the KKK had more members in Canada than all other service and social groups combined, Japanese internment, and they have more than enough evidence to support their view.
We've entered the post truth era. Whenever ruling governments reject history, and the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and when they label the very institutions which were instrumental in shaping and building our societies as racist and irrelevant, it only leads to chaos; a house of cards environment, so to speak. How much longer are people going to tolerate it, is the real question. I hope they wake up before the damage is irreparable.
Kudos. I agree with almost everything in this article, and it almost could have been written by me. Although I have never had a party allegiance, I have voted Liberal most of the time and have voted NDP and have voted for either PC or CPC. In fact, I've voted for 5 different parties in the last 5 elections I've voted in. And that includes having voted for Trudeau's Liberals in there.
But, he has rapidly become the worst PM in my life. I liked his potential when he freed up the Liberal Senators, while not in government or even opposition -- a move toward a more non-partisan Senate. I miss that guy. Instead, we get Canadian Trump. Actually, worse that that; we get the Trump that Trump-haters said that Trump would be.
They said Trump was a bully and called people names. Sure; he verbally attacked the press and called people names like liars, fake, lazy, and -- to his former porn star mistress -- "horseface". Compare that to our leader verbally attacking his own citizens who dare disagree with him on anything as racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, "unacceptable views", "take up space", and that "those people" are "putting their kids at risk, and our kids at risk".
We've heard that kind of demagoguery before, of course. After 9/11, "those people are a threat to our children". In WWII, both our internment camps or German concentration camps were justified because "those people" were a threat to our children. The KKK made those claims. Homophobes confusing homosexuality and pedophilia make the same claims. That is what demagogic bigotry looks like. "Those people are a threat to our kids."
The U.S. got orange-face. We got black-face. They said Trump would be fascist and take away your rights, and create a police state. Instead in March 2019 he made an Executive Order that federal agencies only fund colleges and universities that protect and promote free speech and free inquiry. And Trump didn't invoke the Insurrection Act to sent troops to address the 2020 riots that saw more than 30 people killed, thousands of police injured (and some killed), and $billions in damages.
By way of comparison, we get Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act, tow-truck drivers forced to provide trucks against their will, $36 million in a paramilitary operation in Ottawa, freezing of bank accounts without a court order (and threats to anyone who donated), to deal with a peaceful protest filled with hugs, bouncy castles, singing of O Canada, national unity (even between Quebec and Alberta participants), who were in full compliance with the court order (which only limited air horns and train horns, not honking), and working with city police and politicians to keep lanes open and out of residential areas. He didn't even bother to send an envoy to talk to them. He went from name-calling and hiding to full tyrant mode and wasted money for no good reason.
Trump punches laterally to those in power; Trudeau punches down to attack the working class truckers and protesters. When it came to criticism, Trump was a thin-skinned man-child who said mean things back; Trudeau is a thin-skinned tyrannical toddler who throws offensive names and suspends basic human rights to silence his critics.
On any objective measure of personal and professional behaviour, Trudeau is much worse than Trump ever was. Yet, he gets both a free pass and even cover by the same people who criticized Trump.
The problem isn't that this is a double-standard. That hypocrisy is obvious to everyone. The problem is that this is what happens with divisive ingroup/outgroup psychology. It's not just bad thinking or bad behaviour. It is an evolutionary subroutine built into humans (and chimpanzees, so is ancient) that when you continually push narratives of people belonging to different groups and that they are in conflict with each other, the result is inevitably growing animosity from insults to vitriol to hatred to violence and ultimately the dehumanization of "those people".
This is what causes atrocities of historic proportions. And that is what is in our future with this PM and hyper-partisan press if they are not brought back to the reality that we are all part of one nation trying to get along with common interests, and need to talk out our differences without resorting to name-calling and tyrannical behaviour.
You can look up the psychology, from the Realistic Conflict Theory and the Robbers Cave Experiment, to Jane Elliott's classroom experiments using eye colour, to Social Identity Theory. It's not pretty what happens when you use divisive rhetoric and tactics at this scale. It does not make opponents suddenly silent or "shamed"; it does the opposite. Tribal psychology is like those finger trap games; the harder you pull the tighter it gets on both ends. If you want to escape the trap, you need to actively move toward the middle to come together and release the pressure.
I agree Pollievre isn't the best for the CPC. But, he is the result of -- and perhaps most short-term necessary for -- the "us vs them" divisive political culture we are now in. The Steam Whistle incident is but a tiny example, and it never served the purposes thought (as if they are thinking) by its proponents; that private companies will bow to the pressure and side with the political bullies under threat of "consequences". (Notably, under that theory every society has always had free speech and expression; they just had consequences. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, China, North Korea ... it's just "consequences".)
When the sitting government -- and mainstream press cover -- all act as partisan attack dogs, the response is a partisan attack dog. Anything less would be to allow "evil" to win, and "good people" know to stand up to it. And both sides believe their are good and the other side is the evil. And you get a divided country including private industry.
This is highly predictable. Even historically, it's right there in the pre-amble of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
"Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
"Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
"The General Assembly,
Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. "
I don't like Trudeau. I don't like Pollievre. I would like to see more thoughtful and respectful politics. But we're far from that environment where the patient run the asylum; the government, public service, the press, universities.
What can we, the people, do? I can hope for more articles like this. More people standing up. I volunteer with the Foundation Against Tolerance and Racism (FAIR Canada), which opposes divisive tribalism. We can vote, but with Liberal-NDP lock until 2025 that looks bleak. It would need intervention by the Liberal party, or perhaps GG. That is, it needs to people people to do something. I don't see how to get them there; at least not yet.
The context here is referring to "at the time ..." and that I (like the author) am not tribal about alignment with a specific party or politician but about the issues. At the time, it looked to me like a good move toward at least trying to look non-partisan and unifying and more than Harper was doing, who claimed he couldn't do anything about the Senate. In part it was a symbolic indicator of what type of non-tribal leadership he was interested in, and in part it did take off some of the handcuffs within the Senate in a practical sense.
Now, in retrospect, were those indicators accurate and did it make any practical difference? No, I don't think so. I haven't checked the Senate voting records, but I know Trudeau has not exactly lived up to that promise. Maybe you can argue that the Senate was about to vote down his Emergencies Act in February, even including enough of the Liberals. But, we won't know for sure if it was that or the run on the banks that abruptly caused him to withdraw it.
I agree I ultimately made a bad judgment back then. But, ever time you vote for a change in party or leader you are trying to make predictions about them. In this case he went from mediocre to hypocritically corrupt to tyrannical toddler.
I wish we had better choices. I remember when politicians acted professionally, not like the cast of Mean Girls.
Perhaps now you will give the other perspective. Tarring the government as racist will backfire. Some how you missed the MP that called the prime minister a dictator in the House of Commons. Or the party leader who stood beside and supported the group calling for the overthrow of the government and the continuing vitriol from the opposition.
If you want to vent, please do so, but now write the other side as well.
The Line already posted an article a few weeks ago calling out the use of the term 'dictator' by the opposition. It's in the archive. This is the other side of the coin.
Since 2016 I have always said that Trudeau is the "pretty Trump". He uses the similar methods to the former President to denigrate the opposition. In the US Trump had Fox and OAN to spread his views, in Canada we have CBC and others to uncritically cheerlead Trudeau.
I am going to presume that John doesn’t watch the CBC, and is just repeating the right wing mantra that the CBC is JT’s cheering squad. I do, annoying as it is, (and that’s another column) and that is simply not the case. CBC gives him enough coverage to sink himself, and last night with respect to the Aga Kahn affair, they reported absolutely damning material.
I cannot disagree more. Trudeau is useless, non-transparent and has terrible judgement. He doesn't answer any questions and finishes every "answer" with a proud little smirk. But he's not a serial liar, nor are any of the main Canadian networks comparable to FOX which spins when it isn't outright lying ( a defence it used to defend Tucker in court) of OAN which is all lies, and misinformation.
The politics of combining a sense of moral superiority combined with paranoid fears can get pretty weird sometimes.
In the 2006 election, I was working on the central NDP campaign. A campaign co-worker told me that Stephen Harper "plans to kill people like me". (She was lesbian in her sexual orientation). I thought she was joking and started laughing. "No - it's true," she said. "If Stephen Harper becomes Prime Minister, he will kill every gay and lesbian person in Canada."
So - about a year after Harper became Prime Minister, I ran into her. "Still alive, I see" says I.
"He's just waiting till he gets a majority," was the earnest, fearful response.
Oh, I can tell you. As a young bisexual woman I was the ‘name’ behind a ‘major’ protest against a homophobic preacher who had been invited to speak. This is the mid 1990’s. Afterwards on my work phone I had voicemails left that described my walk home and how they’d rape and murder me. My call to the police consisted of a laughing admonishment to call back once I’d actually been the victim of said crime.
I’m not saying that was necessarily a ‘realistic’ response by the woman you worked with but truly, don’t underestimate the way that she may have been made to feel that the state would not actively protect her or had actually already done her harm.
Yet so often it seems to go back to religion. While I highly doubt that God created man, I'm quite certain that man created God. More often than not, that creation has been used for oppression and control. How a collection of 2000-year-old storybooks can be used to justify telling people how to live their lives escapes. So much of what ails the world could...could be solved simply by treating people the way you want to be treated. Alas, power and control corrupt far too easily for that to be the main mindset of humanity.
Many churches have moved to the centre; likely to try and keep the collection plates full, but it is the rise of fundamentalist religion that is destroying the planet. Look only to the self-advertised "freest country in the world" just south of us to see how rapidly religion is being weaponised in pursuit of control and oppression. These same people are shocked and disgusted when Islam does it, but it's all good when it's based on the twisted words of JC.
I hope you've been able to find some peace and security in a world that is losing its mind and its conscience.
Far-right or left...far anything for that matter is bad for humanity. The right throws just as many darts as the left. I think social media has been a catalyst to off-centre thinking, prompted by a sea of lies and misinformation...on both sides. COVID came along and it made everyone angry. We could have risen to the occasion; we didn't. We doubled down on stupid.
Shortish answer, it made gender affirming the law of the land. if a young child comes in confused about their gender and a therapist does anything but affirm (yes your are trans and need surgery and medicine to correct this) they risk losing their licence. Family courts are also enforcing this rule. Justin gay conversion law put that rule on steriods. Remember Kenneth Zucker, a world leading gender dysphoria psychiatrist was fired for telling parents to wait and see, most will either out grow it or come out as gay.
Secondly in what world does a surgeon think that a 15 year teen should have a mastectomy hysterectomy simply because, thanks to tiktok, they think they are a boy. Think of the parents who fall into this trap only to learn a few years later that they will never have grandkids thanks to the side effects of the meds their daughter was given
Unfortunately the Conservatives are terrified of a bad yelp review and totally caved on this issue.
What a load of hooey. Pierre Poilievre represents the worst of inflammatory demagoguery. His "platform" is hollow and utterly misleading. He demeans our country's most talented contributors. Based on what? His lucrative place at the trough since he was barely out of his teens? His advanced education? He is like a vandal with a blowtorch, nothing more.
At some point calling someone racist will be as effective as calling them a commie. It's been overused, and has no currency. Inflation applied to rhetoric.
Racism is pretty much meaningless now. Any measurable difference between discernible groups is due to racism. Anybody with whom you disagree is a racist. Institutional or systemic racism means that your personal thoughts don 't mean anything anyway, everything is racist. And then there is "horizontal racism".
It is always all about leadership or lack thereof. Methinks JT is an immature individual and should not have been elected as PM but that is what the electorate wanted regardless of his background or experience. Immature leadership allows the kind of whiplash governance that you cite above (such as the odd contradictions made during the pandemic to name but a few). I also concur with your points about Poilievre. He may win the CPC nomination but not the nation. So why bother.
I think Pollievre would be a more effective PM than Trudeau, both nationally and on the international stage. I expect the Liberals will get very nasty if P becomes the leader. But they'll get nasty no matter who it is. Because that's who they are.
I don’t disagree. The problem is getting elected. He has come across as antagonistic along with a few other negatives. Most of what he says is correct. It is how he says it that will turn on or off voters for him.
Yup. But "Liberals won't like him" is a poor excuse for Conservatives to not vote for him as leader. That said, if they don't vote for him for other reasons, that's perfectly fine. They just shouldn't focus on the Liberal likeability scale. No matter how potentially likeable a candidate is, the Liberals will attack like crazy. Why not have someone strong enough to stand up to it?
The NDP is the same. I have posted before about how Singh kicked a loyal NDP MP in the backside without so much as an investigation. I’m not telling the story of Erin Weir again.
I'm not a PP supporter, although he is focusing on the right issues and has run a great campaign. Maybe with a talented cabinet, he could run an effective government.
Jenni Byrne and John Baird seem to realize that beating the the Liberals will require not only responding to their tactics of misinformation, division and deflection, but escalating.
A bit of reality might fit in here before the knee-jerk Trudeau haters have their say. When Justin Trudeau began his political career, Jean Chretien wouldn't let him have a nomination in a safe seat in Montreal, so he contested and won the nomination in a swing seat in an ethnically diverse riding. He worked hard for three years to develop as an MP and to begin to build support for his leadership campaign. A major advantage at the time was that the rest of the Liberal Party seemed to have given up. I remember reading serious think pieces on the death of the Liberal Party. Justin Trudeau won the leadership because he worked very, very hard to rebuild the party organization.
J.T. signed on as a politician, not a statesman, and not a saint. He has shown a clear eye for how Parliament works, as with his almost effortless reform of the senate.
He seems to understand voters, and the management of effort during a campaign to do what it takes to win. That is what a politician does.
I concur with most of your response. My point is only about the type of person who should be PM. Yes anyone can do so if they work hard enough but the background (and I don’t mean family influence because of name recognition) is important. He has done better at playing the role than either Joe Clark or Scheer — both who also were purely politicians with little else to add to their résumés.
The irony back then was that Andrew Scheer had less real-world experience. He spent some time as an office boy and, surprise!, he's an American citizen. The "He's not ready" campaign was a legitimate criticism of Trudeau but the CPC's own guy was even less ready. O'Toole was a big improvement but I feel PP is a step backwards.
Canadian politics is in the toilet. We see and hear the "hate" message from both the Liberals and the Conservatives, who spend more time bashing the character of the other party members, then they do in actually running the country.
Trudeau is the most divisive PM Canada has seen in decades. Maybe ever. The Liberal party of today is not the Liberal party of Chretien, Martin etc. But at this point in our history, most political parties are a bit of a mess. No party has any real vision for Canada. Most politicians want to get elected for their own self-interest, not to make Canada better. Which is supposed to be the point of public office.
Thank you for a clear and withering analysis.
"Vendors provide services to the public, and shouldn’t discriminate against individuals or groups".
"Canadians will not support a government that seeks so transparently to divide it [sic]".
Our Covid response shows that all the old rules are inapplicable, as long as the media is willing to give the government their support, explicit or tacit.
Very well written. it seems to me that outsiders must consider us the most racist country in the world and that is certainly not what we are. However, I'm really wondering about our PM!
I consider myself a conservative who supports social programs. I have, in the past. Voted Liberal. I cannot explain how much a cannot stand JT and how much I think he is a useless leader who is trying to destroy everything that I think Canada stands for. Perhaps he isn’t doing it deliberately. Maybe he’s just too stupid to realize. I feel sorry for the old “Liberals” like Dan McTeague who were the Liberals I voted for - he and his ilk have nothing complimentary to say about JT and I don’t know who they would vote for now.
No need to explain. Many of us can relate ;-) I think he's just in it for himself and can't figure out why people don't agree that what's good for Justin isn't necessarily good for the country.
He is a hero of mine as well.
Not sure if Mark Carney is a centrist but at least he has a fantastic resume that doesn’t have “camp counsellor” as it’s most prestigious listing.
Central Bankers, past and present, aren't going to be popular over the next few years as they rightfully or wrongfully bear the blame for the inflation mess.
From an outsider's perspective, Canada is definitely hyper racist. Where a hijab gets you fired, advertising eggs from your farm in English gets you fined, where a respected Catholic religious leader (Chanoine Groulx) preaches that the Jews were responsible for Jesus' crucifixion, where a Quebec premier (Maurice Duplessis) gets elected by blaming his voters problems on the Jews, where hospital services in English are denied if you live in the wrong area, etc etc. Let’s not forget the treatment of First Nations members, the ongoing cold civil war between French and English, the fact that for a while in the 1920s or 1930s or both the KKK had more members in Canada than all other service and social groups combined, Japanese internment, and they have more than enough evidence to support their view.
We've entered the post truth era. Whenever ruling governments reject history, and the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and when they label the very institutions which were instrumental in shaping and building our societies as racist and irrelevant, it only leads to chaos; a house of cards environment, so to speak. How much longer are people going to tolerate it, is the real question. I hope they wake up before the damage is irreparable.
Great article. I doubt the Liberals will change attack tactics as conjuring racism to smear its opposition has worked so effectively since the 90's.
While simultaneously accusing the Conservatives of using the politics of division and fear. Some great projectionism they've got going there.
Excellent read. Trudeau has always been divisive. Nice to see that some are waking up to that.
Kudos. I agree with almost everything in this article, and it almost could have been written by me. Although I have never had a party allegiance, I have voted Liberal most of the time and have voted NDP and have voted for either PC or CPC. In fact, I've voted for 5 different parties in the last 5 elections I've voted in. And that includes having voted for Trudeau's Liberals in there.
But, he has rapidly become the worst PM in my life. I liked his potential when he freed up the Liberal Senators, while not in government or even opposition -- a move toward a more non-partisan Senate. I miss that guy. Instead, we get Canadian Trump. Actually, worse that that; we get the Trump that Trump-haters said that Trump would be.
They said Trump was a bully and called people names. Sure; he verbally attacked the press and called people names like liars, fake, lazy, and -- to his former porn star mistress -- "horseface". Compare that to our leader verbally attacking his own citizens who dare disagree with him on anything as racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, "unacceptable views", "take up space", and that "those people" are "putting their kids at risk, and our kids at risk".
We've heard that kind of demagoguery before, of course. After 9/11, "those people are a threat to our children". In WWII, both our internment camps or German concentration camps were justified because "those people" were a threat to our children. The KKK made those claims. Homophobes confusing homosexuality and pedophilia make the same claims. That is what demagogic bigotry looks like. "Those people are a threat to our kids."
The U.S. got orange-face. We got black-face. They said Trump would be fascist and take away your rights, and create a police state. Instead in March 2019 he made an Executive Order that federal agencies only fund colleges and universities that protect and promote free speech and free inquiry. And Trump didn't invoke the Insurrection Act to sent troops to address the 2020 riots that saw more than 30 people killed, thousands of police injured (and some killed), and $billions in damages.
By way of comparison, we get Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act, tow-truck drivers forced to provide trucks against their will, $36 million in a paramilitary operation in Ottawa, freezing of bank accounts without a court order (and threats to anyone who donated), to deal with a peaceful protest filled with hugs, bouncy castles, singing of O Canada, national unity (even between Quebec and Alberta participants), who were in full compliance with the court order (which only limited air horns and train horns, not honking), and working with city police and politicians to keep lanes open and out of residential areas. He didn't even bother to send an envoy to talk to them. He went from name-calling and hiding to full tyrant mode and wasted money for no good reason.
Trump punches laterally to those in power; Trudeau punches down to attack the working class truckers and protesters. When it came to criticism, Trump was a thin-skinned man-child who said mean things back; Trudeau is a thin-skinned tyrannical toddler who throws offensive names and suspends basic human rights to silence his critics.
On any objective measure of personal and professional behaviour, Trudeau is much worse than Trump ever was. Yet, he gets both a free pass and even cover by the same people who criticized Trump.
The problem isn't that this is a double-standard. That hypocrisy is obvious to everyone. The problem is that this is what happens with divisive ingroup/outgroup psychology. It's not just bad thinking or bad behaviour. It is an evolutionary subroutine built into humans (and chimpanzees, so is ancient) that when you continually push narratives of people belonging to different groups and that they are in conflict with each other, the result is inevitably growing animosity from insults to vitriol to hatred to violence and ultimately the dehumanization of "those people".
This is what causes atrocities of historic proportions. And that is what is in our future with this PM and hyper-partisan press if they are not brought back to the reality that we are all part of one nation trying to get along with common interests, and need to talk out our differences without resorting to name-calling and tyrannical behaviour.
You can look up the psychology, from the Realistic Conflict Theory and the Robbers Cave Experiment, to Jane Elliott's classroom experiments using eye colour, to Social Identity Theory. It's not pretty what happens when you use divisive rhetoric and tactics at this scale. It does not make opponents suddenly silent or "shamed"; it does the opposite. Tribal psychology is like those finger trap games; the harder you pull the tighter it gets on both ends. If you want to escape the trap, you need to actively move toward the middle to come together and release the pressure.
I agree Pollievre isn't the best for the CPC. But, he is the result of -- and perhaps most short-term necessary for -- the "us vs them" divisive political culture we are now in. The Steam Whistle incident is but a tiny example, and it never served the purposes thought (as if they are thinking) by its proponents; that private companies will bow to the pressure and side with the political bullies under threat of "consequences". (Notably, under that theory every society has always had free speech and expression; they just had consequences. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, China, North Korea ... it's just "consequences".)
When the sitting government -- and mainstream press cover -- all act as partisan attack dogs, the response is a partisan attack dog. Anything less would be to allow "evil" to win, and "good people" know to stand up to it. And both sides believe their are good and the other side is the evil. And you get a divided country including private industry.
This is highly predictable. Even historically, it's right there in the pre-amble of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
"Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
"Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
"The General Assembly,
Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. "
I don't like Trudeau. I don't like Pollievre. I would like to see more thoughtful and respectful politics. But we're far from that environment where the patient run the asylum; the government, public service, the press, universities.
What can we, the people, do? I can hope for more articles like this. More people standing up. I volunteer with the Foundation Against Tolerance and Racism (FAIR Canada), which opposes divisive tribalism. We can vote, but with Liberal-NDP lock until 2025 that looks bleak. It would need intervention by the Liberal party, or perhaps GG. That is, it needs to people people to do something. I don't see how to get them there; at least not yet.
Please keep this up. Thank you.
Great question.
The context here is referring to "at the time ..." and that I (like the author) am not tribal about alignment with a specific party or politician but about the issues. At the time, it looked to me like a good move toward at least trying to look non-partisan and unifying and more than Harper was doing, who claimed he couldn't do anything about the Senate. In part it was a symbolic indicator of what type of non-tribal leadership he was interested in, and in part it did take off some of the handcuffs within the Senate in a practical sense.
Now, in retrospect, were those indicators accurate and did it make any practical difference? No, I don't think so. I haven't checked the Senate voting records, but I know Trudeau has not exactly lived up to that promise. Maybe you can argue that the Senate was about to vote down his Emergencies Act in February, even including enough of the Liberals. But, we won't know for sure if it was that or the run on the banks that abruptly caused him to withdraw it.
I agree I ultimately made a bad judgment back then. But, ever time you vote for a change in party or leader you are trying to make predictions about them. In this case he went from mediocre to hypocritically corrupt to tyrannical toddler.
I wish we had better choices. I remember when politicians acted professionally, not like the cast of Mean Girls.
Perhaps now you will give the other perspective. Tarring the government as racist will backfire. Some how you missed the MP that called the prime minister a dictator in the House of Commons. Or the party leader who stood beside and supported the group calling for the overthrow of the government and the continuing vitriol from the opposition.
If you want to vent, please do so, but now write the other side as well.
Neither side has clean hands in the name calling.
The Line already posted an article a few weeks ago calling out the use of the term 'dictator' by the opposition. It's in the archive. This is the other side of the coin.
Can you give me a reference so I can read it
Go to the archive, hit Ctrl-F, type the word 'dictator.'
Agreed.
Since 2016 I have always said that Trudeau is the "pretty Trump". He uses the similar methods to the former President to denigrate the opposition. In the US Trump had Fox and OAN to spread his views, in Canada we have CBC and others to uncritically cheerlead Trudeau.
I am going to presume that John doesn’t watch the CBC, and is just repeating the right wing mantra that the CBC is JT’s cheering squad. I do, annoying as it is, (and that’s another column) and that is simply not the case. CBC gives him enough coverage to sink himself, and last night with respect to the Aga Kahn affair, they reported absolutely damning material.
The main Difference between Trump and Trudeau is their system was designed to protect citizens from overreach, ours was designed to allow it …
I cannot disagree more. Trudeau is useless, non-transparent and has terrible judgement. He doesn't answer any questions and finishes every "answer" with a proud little smirk. But he's not a serial liar, nor are any of the main Canadian networks comparable to FOX which spins when it isn't outright lying ( a defence it used to defend Tucker in court) of OAN which is all lies, and misinformation.
You answered your own question. How can you lie when you say nothing of substance?
On part 2 we'll agree to disagree again :)
Bang on.
Great article. Stopped voting liberal for the same reasons.
The politics of combining a sense of moral superiority combined with paranoid fears can get pretty weird sometimes.
In the 2006 election, I was working on the central NDP campaign. A campaign co-worker told me that Stephen Harper "plans to kill people like me". (She was lesbian in her sexual orientation). I thought she was joking and started laughing. "No - it's true," she said. "If Stephen Harper becomes Prime Minister, he will kill every gay and lesbian person in Canada."
So - about a year after Harper became Prime Minister, I ran into her. "Still alive, I see" says I.
"He's just waiting till he gets a majority," was the earnest, fearful response.
I would love to know how people devolve that that level of unreality.
Oh, I can tell you. As a young bisexual woman I was the ‘name’ behind a ‘major’ protest against a homophobic preacher who had been invited to speak. This is the mid 1990’s. Afterwards on my work phone I had voicemails left that described my walk home and how they’d rape and murder me. My call to the police consisted of a laughing admonishment to call back once I’d actually been the victim of said crime.
I’m not saying that was necessarily a ‘realistic’ response by the woman you worked with but truly, don’t underestimate the way that she may have been made to feel that the state would not actively protect her or had actually already done her harm.
The sad part is today it's the gay rights activists that are doing the threatening, google "kill all terfs" - scary shit!
I cannot imagine.
Yet so often it seems to go back to religion. While I highly doubt that God created man, I'm quite certain that man created God. More often than not, that creation has been used for oppression and control. How a collection of 2000-year-old storybooks can be used to justify telling people how to live their lives escapes. So much of what ails the world could...could be solved simply by treating people the way you want to be treated. Alas, power and control corrupt far too easily for that to be the main mindset of humanity.
Many churches have moved to the centre; likely to try and keep the collection plates full, but it is the rise of fundamentalist religion that is destroying the planet. Look only to the self-advertised "freest country in the world" just south of us to see how rapidly religion is being weaponised in pursuit of control and oppression. These same people are shocked and disgusted when Islam does it, but it's all good when it's based on the twisted words of JC.
I hope you've been able to find some peace and security in a world that is losing its mind and its conscience.
Far-right or left...far anything for that matter is bad for humanity. The right throws just as many darts as the left. I think social media has been a catalyst to off-centre thinking, prompted by a sea of lies and misinformation...on both sides. COVID came along and it made everyone angry. We could have risen to the occasion; we didn't. We doubled down on stupid.
Ironic considering it was Justin who made gay conversion therapy the law of the land!
Huh? I must have missed that memo.
Or perhaps I misunderstood the government’s December 8, 2021 Royal Assent that banned conversion therapy.
What am I missing here, Mr. German Rob?
What???? Care to explain that?
Shortish answer, it made gender affirming the law of the land. if a young child comes in confused about their gender and a therapist does anything but affirm (yes your are trans and need surgery and medicine to correct this) they risk losing their licence. Family courts are also enforcing this rule. Justin gay conversion law put that rule on steriods. Remember Kenneth Zucker, a world leading gender dysphoria psychiatrist was fired for telling parents to wait and see, most will either out grow it or come out as gay.
Secondly in what world does a surgeon think that a 15 year teen should have a mastectomy hysterectomy simply because, thanks to tiktok, they think they are a boy. Think of the parents who fall into this trap only to learn a few years later that they will never have grandkids thanks to the side effects of the meds their daughter was given
Unfortunately the Conservatives are terrified of a bad yelp review and totally caved on this issue.
Hope that helps.
What a load of hooey. Pierre Poilievre represents the worst of inflammatory demagoguery. His "platform" is hollow and utterly misleading. He demeans our country's most talented contributors. Based on what? His lucrative place at the trough since he was barely out of his teens? His advanced education? He is like a vandal with a blowtorch, nothing more.
..and he is obviously a racist and wants to deny women the right to choose
At some point calling someone racist will be as effective as calling them a commie. It's been overused, and has no currency. Inflation applied to rhetoric.
Racism is pretty much meaningless now. Any measurable difference between discernible groups is due to racism. Anybody with whom you disagree is a racist. Institutional or systemic racism means that your personal thoughts don 't mean anything anyway, everything is racist. And then there is "horizontal racism".
It is always all about leadership or lack thereof. Methinks JT is an immature individual and should not have been elected as PM but that is what the electorate wanted regardless of his background or experience. Immature leadership allows the kind of whiplash governance that you cite above (such as the odd contradictions made during the pandemic to name but a few). I also concur with your points about Poilievre. He may win the CPC nomination but not the nation. So why bother.
I think Pollievre would be a more effective PM than Trudeau, both nationally and on the international stage. I expect the Liberals will get very nasty if P becomes the leader. But they'll get nasty no matter who it is. Because that's who they are.
I don’t disagree. The problem is getting elected. He has come across as antagonistic along with a few other negatives. Most of what he says is correct. It is how he says it that will turn on or off voters for him.
Yup. But "Liberals won't like him" is a poor excuse for Conservatives to not vote for him as leader. That said, if they don't vote for him for other reasons, that's perfectly fine. They just shouldn't focus on the Liberal likeability scale. No matter how potentially likeable a candidate is, the Liberals will attack like crazy. Why not have someone strong enough to stand up to it?
The NDP is the same. I have posted before about how Singh kicked a loyal NDP MP in the backside without so much as an investigation. I’m not telling the story of Erin Weir again.
That was nasty...
The bar is low.
I'm not a PP supporter, although he is focusing on the right issues and has run a great campaign. Maybe with a talented cabinet, he could run an effective government.
Jenni Byrne and John Baird seem to realize that beating the the Liberals will require not only responding to their tactics of misinformation, division and deflection, but escalating.
Dan McTeague said if his name hadn’t been “Trudeau” nobody would have looked at him twice.
A bit of reality might fit in here before the knee-jerk Trudeau haters have their say. When Justin Trudeau began his political career, Jean Chretien wouldn't let him have a nomination in a safe seat in Montreal, so he contested and won the nomination in a swing seat in an ethnically diverse riding. He worked hard for three years to develop as an MP and to begin to build support for his leadership campaign. A major advantage at the time was that the rest of the Liberal Party seemed to have given up. I remember reading serious think pieces on the death of the Liberal Party. Justin Trudeau won the leadership because he worked very, very hard to rebuild the party organization.
J.T. signed on as a politician, not a statesman, and not a saint. He has shown a clear eye for how Parliament works, as with his almost effortless reform of the senate.
He seems to understand voters, and the management of effort during a campaign to do what it takes to win. That is what a politician does.
I concur with most of your response. My point is only about the type of person who should be PM. Yes anyone can do so if they work hard enough but the background (and I don’t mean family influence because of name recognition) is important. He has done better at playing the role than either Joe Clark or Scheer — both who also were purely politicians with little else to add to their résumés.
He had zero qualifications and less experience. He had Trudeau name and he is very pretty. 😉😁🤷🏻♂️
The irony back then was that Andrew Scheer had less real-world experience. He spent some time as an office boy and, surprise!, he's an American citizen. The "He's not ready" campaign was a legitimate criticism of Trudeau but the CPC's own guy was even less ready. O'Toole was a big improvement but I feel PP is a step backwards.
Concur with all you say.
Canadian politics is in the toilet. We see and hear the "hate" message from both the Liberals and the Conservatives, who spend more time bashing the character of the other party members, then they do in actually running the country.