Dispatch from the Front Line: We're back! Yay?

Jamaica. THE FUTURE! Aliens. Israel. Ukraine. And the end of a newsroom.

Well folks, we're back here again. 

Not just "here" in the metaphorical sense that we are back in the saddle and aiming to produce lots of informative and lively writing for all you fine people. We mean "Canada" is back "here" in the weird place again — because the prime minister simply cannot do without an ultra luxury vacation. 

Despite catching flak for this issue so many times that we've officially lost count of our fearless leader's vacation schedule, Justin Trudeau decided to go on a most-expenses paid vacation at another Illuminati-level resort owned by a long-time family friend. 

This time, in Jamaica, in a resort owned by businessman Peter Green, that typically sells rooms for $9,300 a night. This is the same place where Trudeau took that other Jamaica trip. That was different from the Aga Khan Island trip. And the Tofino vacation he took during the first National Reconciliation Day. 

Oh, and the prime minister's plane broke down. Again. We aren’t going to make a stink about that, it’s one of the fleet’s newer planes and stuff breaks down sometimes. Not every mechanical issue is symbolic or a scandal. But yikes.

Back to the vacation: we're not going to spend too much time re-hashing the ethics and the optics of these vacations. This time, the trip was cleared by the Ethics Commissioner, and we don't think that Trudeau has done anything "wrong" by the letter of conflicts of interest act, in as much as we have one. Does it say something about the nature of Canada's highly incestuous ruling classes? Sure. Is it poor optics to be taking ultra-luxury vacations in a moment when most of the country is struggling with food bills and rising mortgages? Yes, of course it is. But what more needs to be said about that, really? 

The real question outstanding for your Line editors is: why? Get caught on a fancy ticket once, shame on you; twice, shame on the voter. We don't have a pithy extension to that old rhyme to cover all the incidents since, however. How many luxury vacations does a prime minister need to take before he realizes that doing this is a bad idea that makes him look tone deaf and elitist? At the very least, it would remind voters of the Aga Khan mess, in which the ethics commissioner did knock Trudeau for his ethical breach. And, besides, was Christmas at Harrington Lake post $8.6-million renovation really that much of a chore? 

We at The Line have two theories, each championed by its respective editor; the prime minister is either three spins into a profound self-destructive spiral: or he really just does not care. 

Theory 1: Trudeau is constitutionally incapable of stepping away from his current role. There are no viable leadership alternatives, and his party has been so centralized into a cult of personality that the Liberals may not not be able to recover from his departure. 

At the same time, Trudeau is neither particularly capable as a prime minister, nor does he actually enjoy the role very much. After almost a decade in power, he's been unable to champion a real vision for the country and he struggles to get anything done — long gone are the days of bold promises, replaced now by time extensions granted by the epically borked NDP. This has left him grasping for legacy policy changes that are largely superficial (and sometimes unconstitutional), if well meaning. 

Most of Trudeau's term has been reactionary, in the value-neutral sense that he has been forced to react to events and crises beyond his control or making, from the election of Trump and COVID, to the Trucker Convoy. Clearly, this job has taken a toll on him and his family and, at least subconsciously, he doesn't actually want to do it anymore. But he just can't bring himself to step aside and appear the coward before Pierre Poilievre. 

So, essentially, this theory goes — he's engaging in self sabotage. Consciously or otherwise, he's replaying his previous poor judgment and ethical lapses because, deep in his heart, he wants to be fired. 

If that’s a little too much pop psych for you all, the second theory is that Trudeau simply DGAF. He got away with all of those previous fancy holidays. Why not get away with this one? The usual partisans will scream and whine for a few days and we'll all move on. He'll get a nice vacation, and if it pleases the ex and makes the kids happy, well, all the better. Trudeau doesn't care about optics or ethics because he doesn't have to care; his critics don't matter, and his supporters have clearly signalled that they are along for the ride no matter what he does. 

Both of these theories may be true or wrong, but it will be interesting to ponder as 2024 plays out whether Trudeau's greatest bane proves to be self-sabotage or indifference. 

Your Line editors are opening the betting table now. 

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And that brings us to the matter of 2024. 

As this is our first dispatch of the year, now would be a good chance to offer, if not predictions, then look at the lay of the land, as it were. 

The first thing to note is that this will be an American election year. Already, yes. November looms over us like a time tunnel and your Line editors share a strain of sick dread to consider it. The Iowa Caucus — that first event in the American quadrennial electoral extravaganza — is less than a week away. 

We think there are very good odds that Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination. That is, to whatever extent there are "Republicans" anymore. Further, while we don't claim to understand Trump's fitness for office, mental or physical state, we don't expect incumbent president Joe Biden, 81, to offer a robust and articulate alternative to Trump, 77. We don’t underestimate Biden, per se — he is an experienced politician who performs better than many of his critics pretend. But we don’t accept as a given, or close to it, that Biden would defeat Trump in walk.

We expect the American Show to dominate politics both there, and here. 

Frankly, part of the reason we think the Liberals in general, and Trudeau in particular, still cling to an expectation of defeating the Conservatives in the next election is rooted in this political calculus. They expect chaos, and they expect a Trump re-election (or near miss) to stoke fear about Pierre Poilievre. From this vantage point, we suspect they're hoping to essentially re-hash the last three election strategies — to lean heavily on wedge issues, vote efficiency, and fear. 

We also expect this is a miscalculation. To this end, we also don't rule out a Canadian election in 2024, one timed to surf the wave of American disunity. 

We would also note that we don't think this is going to work. Poilievre has his faults, but he's not Donald Trump, and he will come off looking stronger by such a comparison. The Liberals are plumb out of viable wedge issues, having run right through to the bottom of their usual abortion-n-gun show. And Canadians aren't really afraid. They're angry. 

If we're right, this political strategy would be divorced from the economic realities now facing most Canadians; and from the massive cultural shift that is still taking place. When Canadians are done with a party in power, they're usually very hard to dissuade on this point. 

Regardless, another Trump presidency would be uncomfortable news for Canadians, regardless of how we or you feel about MAGA land. That outcome would embolden some of the most radical elements of American society, on both the left and the right, leading to further radicalization and alienation. A Trump presidency risks significant democratic backsliding in the U.S., and damage to its cultural and political institutions. Being so culturally interconnected, we would feel the fallout effects of this, as "normal" political discourse is absorbed by waves of American lunacy. (This has already happened. It could get a lot worse.)

Trump would also be problematic for us economically. We saw a little of that with the renegotiation of NAFTA. An increasingly isolationist America isn't good news for a country as economically dependent upon it as Canada. And while the U.S. would certainly be harmed by shutting us out, they're simply so much larger, wealthier, and influential than we are. We are the more vulnerable party. 

Our last major "prediction" of sorts for 2024 is about aliens. Yes, aliens.

Call us kooks, but we at The Line are bullish on aliens. Probably just because we're sci-fi nerds, but we know you won't hold that against us. And we aren't just talking about the Miami mall incident, either. 

We remain pretty convinced that elements within the U.S. government were slow rolling an "Aliens are Real" PR campaign just prior to 2020. We know, for example, that several heterodox thinkers were contacted to prepare their audiences for starting UAP revelations. Sam Harris is one individual who has spoken about this openly. 

That said, the campaign seemed — to our eyes — to stall out with the pandemic, congressional hearings, NASA releases, and mysterious spy balloons notwithstanding. (God, we miss the balloons.) Still, we've been watching a steady leak of testimony and weird UAP clips leak into the public domain and we expect, now that COVID is well behind us, that 2024 is going to be big for skywatchers. 

Whether this represents a momentous shift in mankind's perspective, or some kind of deepfake distraction from the political turmoil mentioned above, we honestly cannot say. 

We do want it noted, however, that if 2024 is the year we get a saucer on the White House lawn, that your Line editors called it.

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We didn’t have any expectation that it would be otherwise, but as The Line began to return to work after the Christmas break, we found ourselves confronted with a brutal conflict in the Middle East that honestly hadn’t changed that much since we clocked off for the holidays.

We suspect our readers are as aware of the details as they wish to be; given our holiday, you might actually have us at a disadvantage for a few days until we get back up to speed. Still. While we knew better than to expect miracles, even in the Holy Land, it’s a bit depressing to come back after two weeks off and find that Israel’s invasion continues, Hamas still holds hostages, and that there remains a depressingly high risk of regional escalation via some kind of flare up in southern Lebanon, the Red Sea, or both.

We’ll resume watching the conflict and commenting as warranted, but to start, we’ll first note that we still don’t think a lot of people in the West get that Israel does not care about our condemnations and concerns. They have decided that this operation is necessary for their security and nothing else matters. They don’t deserve a blank cheque, and we agree that some of their conduct has likely gone over the line, but we also agree that Israel is acting essentially how any other country in its place would act. If four thousand people in and around Windsor had been slaughtered, and many more raped and kidnapped, by a terrorist group in Michigan, Canada would be trying to destroy that terror group by whatever means necessary (to the extent we’d be capable of such a campaign). This is not a defence of Israeli war conduct or policy, or its leadership generally, but simply our best assessment of humanity: Israel’s response is unfolding along the lines we expected, because of course it is. A UN resolution or stern tut-tutting by a Canadian official isn’t going to change that.

We’ll note next that while we are reassured by the fact that the conflict has not yet meaningfully widened, as noted above, the danger of that remains very real. We are one Hezbollah lucky shot or Houthi direct hit away from a much worse situation. We obviously hope this doesn’t happen. We think it is something we should be prepared for, though.

And last: we’ll have more to say on this later, but we note that the situation in our own country remains very tense. Line editor Gurney wondered early in the conflict how things would look and feel in Canada and the West generally on day 81 of the ground invasion. It was just a number plucked out of thin air to make a point, but not for nothing, we aren’t that far off from it.

And apart from the pro-Palestine protestors who were kindly supplied coffee by the police, things don’t look and feel great at all, do they?

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We haven’t forgotten the other war. Since the New Year, Vladimir Putin has unleashed the most intense campaign of drone and missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure since the full-scale invasion began in 2022. Night after night for a week now, Ukrainians across the country have headed to the bomb shelters to wait out yet another wave of attacks. And while much of it is directed against military infrastructure, the largely indiscriminate bombing has taken its toll on civilians as well, hitting schools, shopping malls, residential areas and apartment buildings. Over a hundred civilians have been killed already this year, many multiples of that injured, and Ukrainian air defences are clearly struggling. On Monday, the Ukrainian Air Force admitted that it had managed to shoot down only 18 of the 51 missiles fired at the country overnight. 

It is not a coincidence that this comes just as the Americans have announced that they have delivered the last of their aid to Ukraine until — or unless — Congress approves another funding package, and also as the wider West has almost completely lost interest in the war. The Ukrainian army is running low on ammunition, especially artillery shells. The already stretched Ukrainian air defence systems could soon run out of interceptor missiles and other forms of ammunition. How bad is the situation? Germany is berating other European countries for not doing enough for Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, Russia is doing an admirable job of putting together its own axis of evil, to borrow a phrase. Iran sends it attack drones by the thousands, while North Korea has provided Russia with as many as half a million artillery shells and now, possibly, ballistic missiles. This is all paid for thanks to China, which has been buying up as much Russian oil and gas as can be pumped.

Things look exceedingly grim for Ukraine. It is going to be another cold, dark winter for them, without the promise of a summer offensive to keep spirits up. If you are Vladimir Putin, your long bet that the West would eventually get bored of Zelenskyy and his whining looks to be paying off nicely. 

Why do we bother rehearsing this for you? For almost two years now, we at The Line have been pretty unequivocal about a few things. The first is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February of 2022 is one of the most heinous unprovoked acts of state-sponsored barbarism that we have seen in our lifetimes. The second is that this is one of those rare cases where there is almost complete overlap between our moral obligations and our self interest: we must support Ukraine because it deserves our help, but also, because it is so obviously in our self-interest to do so. 

But there’s a third point, which has been a longstanding feature of our commentary at The Line, and it is this: we have no faith in our governments’ willingness or ability to rise to the occasion. We don’t like being cynical, we don’t enjoy criticizing our leaders, and we get no pleasure from predicting the worst. But time and time and time again, our cynicism is vindicated, our criticisms are justified, our predictions come true. We would much rather be cheerful optimists. That’s a nicer, better way to live. But we cannot ignore the evidence before our eyes.

As just yet another data point: On New Year’s Day, Justin Trudeau had a phone call with Zelenskky in which he (Trudeau) supposedly “reiterated Canada’s commitment” to supporting Ukraine, pledging to do “as much as it takes, for as long as it takes.” These are fine words indeed, and Canada has been saying similar things since the very start of the invasion. But what are these words worth? When it comes to actual, tangible, useful military aid, Canada remains well down the list of donor countries in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of our GDP. That is, we aren’t doing nearly close to doing what we can, let alone doing as much as it takes. 

We can’t help but wonder what Zelenskyy thought of his January 1 chat with Trudeau. Did it strike him as a little bit crass that Trudeau might call him to offer his support while relaxing at an ultra-exclusive resort in Jamaica? Did Zelenskky have the bad form to ask Trudeau whatever happened to the $400 million NASAMS air defence system that Canada “bought” for Ukraine, and claimed a year ago that it was already on its way, but which still hasn’t arrived?

Or does Zelenskyy still remember when, as Russia was building up its forces on the border and clearly planning to invade Ukraine in late January 2022, a handful of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers took to their social media pages to post pictures of themselves holding small white signs with the hashtag #standwithukraine printed on it?

Because if he does remember that ridiculous act of vacantly performative solidarity, then whatever Canada has — or more to the point, has not — done since would not surprise him in the slightest. 

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A short note to end: your Line editors were not surprised, but were a little bit sad, to hear the news last week that the National Post, where Gerson and Gurney first met, has permanently closed its Toronto newsroom, switching to a virtual operation.

This has been a long time coming, and we suspect other large newsrooms will continue to make the same call. We suspect that, at least in the big-picture sense, the pandemic-era lockdowns killed the traditional newsroom, even if it is, in some places, a slow death. This is especially true in Canada given the structure of the federal subsidies and supports the government is providing to legacy media companies. The subsidy is attached to the employees, not the other overhead costs, so there is an even greater need now to cut all non-salary costs to maximize those government bucks.

Your Line editors are realists, or aspire to be. Shuttering the physical newsroom is the right business decision. It will free up money for what matters most — people. We can’t argue against that.

But as journalists who worked for years at the Post — in Gurney’s case, in that very newsroom, and the one that preceded it — we did feel the slightest tug at our heartstrings. We had a lot of good memories there.

And we feel terrible for the young journalists who’ll never have the chance to make their own memories in that kind of environment. Gurney and Gerson are both too young to have been part of the Post’s launch; they joined when the paper was about a decade old. We used to be regaled — sometimes more like tortured — with tales about how amazing things had been at the start. We felt the slight sting of knowing we could spend 30 years there but never be a “Day Oner,” with the little plaque and the jacket.

Well, now we’re the old farts, we guess. As a kindness to those younger than us, we won’t torment them with stories about what they’ve lost out on ever knowing. We’ll simply wish them luck. It’s a strange new world out there, and we at The Line have adjusted to it as best we can. There are pros and cons to working in a fully virtual arrangement from home, as we do. It works for us, but there are cons, and there’s no shame in admitting that. You adjust. You adapt. You find a way to make it work.

We expect our friends at the National Post, and then many other further places, to do the same. Good luck to all.

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Alright, guys, that’s it. We are back in business. We’ll begin rolling out some articles starting tomorrow, and we’ll do a normal dispatch this week. One programming note, though: we regret to inform you that The Line Podcast will have to wait another week before returning, due to schedule conflicts among the hosts. We miss it too! It’ll be back end of next week, we promise.

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The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Follow us on Twitter @the_lineca. Fight with us on Facebook. Pitch us something:  lineeditor@protonmail.com