Dispatch From the Front Lines: God save the King
And God help the post office. And god damn our gutless politicians and police leaders for abandoning Canadians to suffer.
Happy weekend, everybody. Lots going on — some good, some bad. We’ll get into it.
Always good? The Line Podcast.
Also worth a watch: the latest On The Line, where Jen Gerson speaks to the CBC’s David Perlich, a producer and Vatican analyst, on the recent major events in Rome … and his own life’s journey.
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And now, on with the dispatch.
We’ll never forget the moment when our take on Justin Trudeau’s government shifted from “lord they are smugly woke” to “wow, it’s a frigging cult.”
It was in December 2021, when we read Trudeau’s mandate letter to his minister of national defence, Anita Anand. It wasn’t just that it was incredibly long, coming in just shy of 2,500 words. It was that the first third of it was highly torqued and deeply partisan language celebrating the Liberals’ pandemic policies and proclaiming the need to keep fighting climate change and to advance the cause of reconciliation. It also directed the minister to, wherever possible, make sure that her policies adopt an “intersectional lens” and use Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus), and to seek out diverse voices including “ women, Indigenous Peoples, Black and racialized Canadians, newcomers, faith-based communities, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ2 Canadians” — and to do so in both official languages to boot.