Now would be a good time to point out that the same group of advisors that destroyed the Ontario Liberal party have also destroyed the Federal Liberal party. They did not learn a single thing.
True, but it speaks very poorly of the said voters. They also consistently voted for the destruction of their own province. Let us imagine where Ontario could have been economically had they not voted so foolishly.
Stop it. Doug Ford is running bigger deficits today than either Wynne of McGinty. Conservatives in power spend like Liberals...and always have. The money just flows in a different direction.
In fairness, it's not a case of Ontario voters being so in love with Ford. What's the alternative? All too often Ford isn't above abusing the power he has, but at least he's minimally competent.
"....if the Liberal Party were internally healthy enough as an institution to function in its own best interests, it would have ejected Trudeau a year ago". The big red tent is gone, all is left is a charred rag. Shame on those centralist liberals who have not spoken up. This is a Chin-Telford-Butts government and it has brought this country to its knees. For the love of Canada, get rid of the Trudeau PMO.
Trudeau cannot resign in part due to his massive and misplaced ego and also to do so would deprive the voters of this country the right to fire his sorry ass.
Trudeau should stay on until the bitter end of an electoral defeat because the current state of the Liberal Party is the product of his leadership and control freak micromanagement. Leaving now will just leave somebody else to go down with the sinking ship.
His policies and strategies have led to the current woeful state of public opinion where there's a sense that Canada is broken. He's kept a tight grip on his party, and squelched rising talent or purged capable people who could challenge his authority. That's left the current caucus lacks the talent or the capacity to turn this around, as evidenced by their inability to shove out Trudeau at many points that would've finished past leaders.
As a sidenote: Trudeau's shameless perseverance through scandals that would've finished other party leaders in Westminster democracies has often been cited as evidence of Trudeau's teflon political savvy. Given where the Liberals are today, perhaps it's more an illustration of why the conventional wisdom of getting rid of a leader who's suffered that sort of scandal is correct.
Other Westminster systems have never had a party that identifies with a political family as deeply as the Trudeau's do with the Liberals. They, and the tribe they represent, are one and the same. The Ottawa Valley and West Island along with Central and Eastern Canadian urban old stock boomers have a party laser guided to their wants and needs, that their coalition is too small and declining (via death).
The Liberals and the Trudeau dynasty are a product of the "1967 Generation" and their children. This too will pass.
"Trudeau should stay on until the bitter end of an electoral defeat because the current state of the Liberal Party is the product of his leadership and control freak micromanagement. Leaving now will just leave somebody else to go down with the sinking ship."
That kind of thinking can cause the very outcome that is assumed to be inevitable, however. Leadership contests are such a rarity these days that we can forget how they are usually more consequential than not.
The efficacy of the race would of course depend on whether the Liberals' governing apparatus has learned how to initiate an open and accessible race that doesn't ignore a candidate's longtime party loyalty, or whether they would be determined to apply the exact same leadership contest rules as of 2013.
I stand by my personal assessment that Trudeau is determined to stay on because he truly believes his narcissistic self-assessment of his own abilities, and because he wants to be the first Prime Minister since Laurier to win four elections in a row (and, not incidentally, best Dad while doing so).
He has long complained about being underestimated his whole life. What he is likely going to find out no later than October 2025 is that he was, actually, greatly overestimated.
By all accounts, Ms. Church was a formidable candidate and put together a volunteer team to match her work ethic that left no rock unturned.
I hope Liberal MPs and volunteers paid attention to two ways the Prime Minister made negative headlines in the final days of the St. Johns campaign.
Eye roller #1 was the photo op ambush with his juvenile “slavi Ukraini’” yodelling. His international counterparts were just as embarrassed as most Canadians.
Eye roller#2 came along with a Freedom of Information release that showed Trudeau’s Indo-Pacific tour in 2023 ran up a $220,000 in-flight catering bill for up to 75 hangers on. Readers need to contextualize this lavish appetite with record numbers of Canadians seeking assistance at food banks.
These kinds of antics are a tough sell on doorsteps, and I would bet that Liberal door knockers in St. Johns got an earful. It will take a leadership campaign to extinguish a tone deafness that Trudeau refuses to acknowledge.
Hey now - not all of Edmonton. (I don't even think most of Edmonton feels that way - just voter turnout really does suck in Edmonton. But federally my seat is CPC and should stay that way. It's just the muni and provincial election where Edmonton lets the union heads sway them far too much.)
Considering Trudeau’s long list of well-established examples of poor and unethical judgement: I can’t help but wonder if his refusals to step down may also be partly rooted in effort of concealing other negative things (maybe even criminal things?) that aren’t in the public sphere — yet — so long as he remains PM? I’d hate to think about any PM in that context, but with THIS PM, I think there’s reasonable cause for the question to emerge…
Also, of note to G&G: enjoy your summers and thank you for the quality service product you produce.
This is my take. It's why he is so hell-bent on controlling the media. I discovered shortly after he was elected that certain articles I had viewed disappeared from Google searches. Butts was getting Google to delete them, just like he got Twitter to get rid of the Liberal parody accounts that were so often on point. I think there is a lot of really damaging stuff out there that he doesn't want us to know. I hope it comes out during my lifetime.
During the 1973-74 academic year, I created the time to read "The Lord of the Rings" to my Grade 6 class in Winnipeg ... and it required all 10 months. I just wanted you to know ...
And while I was reminiscing about it on the school's Facebook page a few months ago, one of the students chirped up and commented, "I remember that! And the poem that you taught us ... "Oh, I have slipped beyond the surly bonds of earth ... "
After more than 50 years, she could still rattle-off the opening line of that sonnet, which we all memorized in its entirety. I got choked-up, as anybody would.
And I wanted Matt to know *that*.
Because he probably knows the (wartime) story behind the poem.
I've been a founding member since almost the very beginning, and have the coffee cup to prove it! And I went to Calgary about a month or two ago for for when Jen and Matt recorded (in a theatre in Kensington) one of the podcasts ... for a sold-out live audience. And then later, met them two at a very cool after-party in a nearby bar!
And stayed in a boo-teek $280/night Kensington hotel! A great weekend!
Great piece. Sorry about the game last night... ugh.
I was listening to your podcast from June 21 this morning where you were exploring what the Libs could do should things go poorly in the byelection... To my mind, the writing has been on the wall for months. The leader is unpopular, the platform of the party is harming Canadians not helping, and they will loose the next election unless bread and butter issues take higher profile. Instead, all we got was politics, chaos and obfuscation, and the inquiry (nea, three inquiries) into electoral interference in which everyone looks bad and our deomcracy appears vulnerable.
This is just my view, but I don't think any person should stand up as interim Liberal leader (or new leader) in advance of the next election. I think the current leaders need to stand still and move through this next election, face the electorate for what they have done, and get eviscerated. No replay of a Liberal Kim Campbell, first female leader of the federal Liberals... don't do it! The PM needs to stand in the mess he's made. Only then will the party realize it has to take the necessary time to rebuild. To reconnect with the idea that governing is the job, not politicing. They need some humbling so they can do things differently next time.
And in the meanwhile, let's see what the next guys will do. For in Canada, we elect OUT governments; we don't elect them IN.
Perhaps that part is on us as electors... not demanding a party platform that has our own best interests at the core instead of what strategists think people will vote for... I feel naive writing that, but that is what I hope will happen: less politics, more governing. (oh, and a flat tax, and investment in our north, and potable water on First Nation reserves, and a coherent modern defense policy including 2% spending on military, and a vision of who we are as "Canadians" so new immigrants know what they have picked in coming here, and a repurposed and kitted out coast guard, and national volunteer corps, and reinvestment in entrepreneurs, and effective support of our economy, and a coherent medical system from coast to coast to coast instead of the chaos that is now, and and and... I'm getting ahead of myself...)
We don't need to 'reinvest' in entrepreneurs - we need to have politicians and regulators and tax collectors GET THE HELL OUT OF THE ENTREPRENEUR's WAY!!! Let entrepreneurs do what they do best!
Also.
We need a LOT LESS government 'support' for our economy. As Jen points out with her coined term 'octopus economy's, that's just about all we have left in 🇨🇦 - a 'government-supported economy; that is actually not a real economy at all.
Also.
Radically flattening and decentralizing the management and delivery of health care is what's needed. This country is much too big to centralize anything, particularly health care.
Re-investing in entrepreneurship can be done by incentivizing them to do what they do. Under Trudeau and Freeland ‘investing’ has come to mean government spending. That needs to change. Government needs to create the proper climate for entrepreneurs not spend our tax dollars picking winners and losers and doing a bad job of it.
Agreed. The proper climate is for government to be as invisible as possible in taxation & regulation.
Entrepreneurs are encouraged to take chances when they see less regulatory hoops and oppressive taxes to overcome.
They have a good idea that they make/provide and sell at a decent profit without having a zillion rules and predatory taxation to discourage them from doing so.
I think it was Trevor Tombe who discovered that corporate welfare is so extensive with this government that corporate tax could be cut in half if they removed it.
When Saint Paul (Paul the Apostle) turns against you, Justin should know he is toast. Can Mark Carney turn himself into Saint Mark, and save the Liberal Party? Not a chance. Forget about it. This group is beyond rescue. Put a fork in them. Any new Liberal leader has to carry on his/her back every incompetent Liberal member of Parliament. How many is that? Just about all of them. Time to hit the road Justin. Take the walk, in the snow or sand but just take the walk.
No walk, we want to kick him out in an election, and his Liebranodips, his personal brand. Glued together from his many lies, that is his personal brand, a dung ball.
Another question to ask is, why would anyone of any stature, like Carney, want to sign on to what would still be an embarrassing loss? The Liberal Party's problem ever since Trudeau the First, is their perennial hunt for a "saviour" leader. Ask Ignatieff how that worked.
The bigger question is why do people think Carney is such a great candidate? The only people who think that are the press (and they have not been swift to pick up the public mood) and hard core Liberals who will vote for them no matter what. Carney gets you downtown Toronto, that’s it. In addition, he was a central banker in charge during the massive asset inflation which made the rich richer and the poor poorer. He is a far more compromise candidate in this environment than the experts are willing to consider.
This is a quote today from His Godliness. "I hear people's concerns and frustrations. These are not easy times and it is clear I and my entire Liberal team have much more hard work to do," Trudeau told reporters in Vancouver.
"My focus is on your success and that's where it's going to stay," he added.
I'm of the mind that the likely savage beating that the LPC takes in the election will be good for them (should they survive it) but I shudder at the thought that the next 4-5 years will just be that the CPC takes power, makes things worse, runs out of scapegoats, and the LPC returns with a campaign based solely on "hey, don't ya miss the days when it was our team making things worse instead of them?"
Stand fast outside the black gates. Let the earth crack open and swallow the evil liberal hoards, returning them to the filthy, stench filled pit from whence they came forth.
Now would be a good time to point out that the same group of advisors that destroyed the Ontario Liberal party have also destroyed the Federal Liberal party. They did not learn a single thing.
Fanatics do not learn things - they see no need to.
A different group was around for both Patrick Brown and Erin O’Toole losing caucus. Maybe we need to pay attention to staffers.
Say what you will, that group seems to have been very successful at winning sufficient support from Ontario voters for a lot of years.
True, but it speaks very poorly of the said voters. They also consistently voted for the destruction of their own province. Let us imagine where Ontario could have been economically had they not voted so foolishly.
Stop it. Doug Ford is running bigger deficits today than either Wynne of McGinty. Conservatives in power spend like Liberals...and always have. The money just flows in a different direction.
There is nothing to stop. McGiny and Wynne massively started the degeneration. Now it keeps going.
Agreed. This is the same group that has given Doug Ford two solid majorities and may well yet give him a third.
In fairness, it's not a case of Ontario voters being so in love with Ford. What's the alternative? All too often Ford isn't above abusing the power he has, but at least he's minimally competent.
That’s because they gave up the center. Once giving up, it’s hard to get it back.
Winning Ontario voters at the expense of Western Canada, to the point that Alberta Separatism is banal dinner party talk in Calgary.
They’ve profited nicely themselves, though.
Some may be ready to come back to Toronto to work for Bonnie Crombie.
"....if the Liberal Party were internally healthy enough as an institution to function in its own best interests, it would have ejected Trudeau a year ago". The big red tent is gone, all is left is a charred rag. Shame on those centralist liberals who have not spoken up. This is a Chin-Telford-Butts government and it has brought this country to its knees. For the love of Canada, get rid of the Trudeau PMO.
Trudeau cannot resign in part due to his massive and misplaced ego and also to do so would deprive the voters of this country the right to fire his sorry ass.
I mean - I'll just be glad he's gone. I don't really care whether he goes by vote or by resignation.
Sooner is far better.
Trudeau should stay on until the bitter end of an electoral defeat because the current state of the Liberal Party is the product of his leadership and control freak micromanagement. Leaving now will just leave somebody else to go down with the sinking ship.
His policies and strategies have led to the current woeful state of public opinion where there's a sense that Canada is broken. He's kept a tight grip on his party, and squelched rising talent or purged capable people who could challenge his authority. That's left the current caucus lacks the talent or the capacity to turn this around, as evidenced by their inability to shove out Trudeau at many points that would've finished past leaders.
As a sidenote: Trudeau's shameless perseverance through scandals that would've finished other party leaders in Westminster democracies has often been cited as evidence of Trudeau's teflon political savvy. Given where the Liberals are today, perhaps it's more an illustration of why the conventional wisdom of getting rid of a leader who's suffered that sort of scandal is correct.
Other Westminster systems have never had a party that identifies with a political family as deeply as the Trudeau's do with the Liberals. They, and the tribe they represent, are one and the same. The Ottawa Valley and West Island along with Central and Eastern Canadian urban old stock boomers have a party laser guided to their wants and needs, that their coalition is too small and declining (via death).
The Liberals and the Trudeau dynasty are a product of the "1967 Generation" and their children. This too will pass.
"Trudeau should stay on until the bitter end of an electoral defeat because the current state of the Liberal Party is the product of his leadership and control freak micromanagement. Leaving now will just leave somebody else to go down with the sinking ship."
That kind of thinking can cause the very outcome that is assumed to be inevitable, however. Leadership contests are such a rarity these days that we can forget how they are usually more consequential than not.
The efficacy of the race would of course depend on whether the Liberals' governing apparatus has learned how to initiate an open and accessible race that doesn't ignore a candidate's longtime party loyalty, or whether they would be determined to apply the exact same leadership contest rules as of 2013.
I'm trying to decide whether this indicates you're in the "denial" or "bargaining" stage of Kubler-Ross...
I stand by my personal assessment that Trudeau is determined to stay on because he truly believes his narcissistic self-assessment of his own abilities, and because he wants to be the first Prime Minister since Laurier to win four elections in a row (and, not incidentally, best Dad while doing so).
He has long complained about being underestimated his whole life. What he is likely going to find out no later than October 2025 is that he was, actually, greatly overestimated.
It all depends. For example, I underestimated how ideologic he would turn out to be.
By all accounts, Ms. Church was a formidable candidate and put together a volunteer team to match her work ethic that left no rock unturned.
I hope Liberal MPs and volunteers paid attention to two ways the Prime Minister made negative headlines in the final days of the St. Johns campaign.
Eye roller #1 was the photo op ambush with his juvenile “slavi Ukraini’” yodelling. His international counterparts were just as embarrassed as most Canadians.
Eye roller#2 came along with a Freedom of Information release that showed Trudeau’s Indo-Pacific tour in 2023 ran up a $220,000 in-flight catering bill for up to 75 hangers on. Readers need to contextualize this lavish appetite with record numbers of Canadians seeking assistance at food banks.
These kinds of antics are a tough sell on doorsteps, and I would bet that Liberal door knockers in St. Johns got an earful. It will take a leadership campaign to extinguish a tone deafness that Trudeau refuses to acknowledge.
I'm sure their overall tacit support of acts of antisemitism didn't help either.
Great job, Jen. I believe you've mastered it. As for the ending of your piece....priceless.
Excellent piece.
And I really wanted the Oilers to win it, even though they are from, you know, Edmonton.
Redmonton. Is how the town votes, go figure.
Hey now - not all of Edmonton. (I don't even think most of Edmonton feels that way - just voter turnout really does suck in Edmonton. But federally my seat is CPC and should stay that way. It's just the muni and provincial election where Edmonton lets the union heads sway them far too much.)
True, that. My seat is that liebranodip boise-someting.
Considering Trudeau’s long list of well-established examples of poor and unethical judgement: I can’t help but wonder if his refusals to step down may also be partly rooted in effort of concealing other negative things (maybe even criminal things?) that aren’t in the public sphere — yet — so long as he remains PM? I’d hate to think about any PM in that context, but with THIS PM, I think there’s reasonable cause for the question to emerge…
Also, of note to G&G: enjoy your summers and thank you for the quality service product you produce.
This is my take. It's why he is so hell-bent on controlling the media. I discovered shortly after he was elected that certain articles I had viewed disappeared from Google searches. Butts was getting Google to delete them, just like he got Twitter to get rid of the Liberal parody accounts that were so often on point. I think there is a lot of really damaging stuff out there that he doesn't want us to know. I hope it comes out during my lifetime.
Great piece - loaded with chuckles and magnificent turn of phrase. And who doesn't love the drama of a massive political upset. Delicious.
During the 1973-74 academic year, I created the time to read "The Lord of the Rings" to my Grade 6 class in Winnipeg ... and it required all 10 months. I just wanted you to know ...
And while I was reminiscing about it on the school's Facebook page a few months ago, one of the students chirped up and commented, "I remember that! And the poem that you taught us ... "Oh, I have slipped beyond the surly bonds of earth ... "
After more than 50 years, she could still rattle-off the opening line of that sonnet, which we all memorized in its entirety. I got choked-up, as anybody would.
And I wanted Matt to know *that*.
Because he probably knows the (wartime) story behind the poem.
Per ardua ad astra
….and touched the face of God.
Imagine my surprise to run across a person you know in the real world in the comment section . Stay well Captain Ron.
I've been a founding member since almost the very beginning, and have the coffee cup to prove it! And I went to Calgary about a month or two ago for for when Jen and Matt recorded (in a theatre in Kensington) one of the podcasts ... for a sold-out live audience. And then later, met them two at a very cool after-party in a nearby bar!
And stayed in a boo-teek $280/night Kensington hotel! A great weekend!
I’m just worried about all the further damage he is going to do to this country before he’s done. IMO he’ll stay until the end.
The real culprit here is Singh who continues to support this incompetent and highly unpopular government.
Yes, Singh deserves to be unemployed.
Great piece. Sorry about the game last night... ugh.
I was listening to your podcast from June 21 this morning where you were exploring what the Libs could do should things go poorly in the byelection... To my mind, the writing has been on the wall for months. The leader is unpopular, the platform of the party is harming Canadians not helping, and they will loose the next election unless bread and butter issues take higher profile. Instead, all we got was politics, chaos and obfuscation, and the inquiry (nea, three inquiries) into electoral interference in which everyone looks bad and our deomcracy appears vulnerable.
This is just my view, but I don't think any person should stand up as interim Liberal leader (or new leader) in advance of the next election. I think the current leaders need to stand still and move through this next election, face the electorate for what they have done, and get eviscerated. No replay of a Liberal Kim Campbell, first female leader of the federal Liberals... don't do it! The PM needs to stand in the mess he's made. Only then will the party realize it has to take the necessary time to rebuild. To reconnect with the idea that governing is the job, not politicing. They need some humbling so they can do things differently next time.
And in the meanwhile, let's see what the next guys will do. For in Canada, we elect OUT governments; we don't elect them IN.
Perhaps that part is on us as electors... not demanding a party platform that has our own best interests at the core instead of what strategists think people will vote for... I feel naive writing that, but that is what I hope will happen: less politics, more governing. (oh, and a flat tax, and investment in our north, and potable water on First Nation reserves, and a coherent modern defense policy including 2% spending on military, and a vision of who we are as "Canadians" so new immigrants know what they have picked in coming here, and a repurposed and kitted out coast guard, and national volunteer corps, and reinvestment in entrepreneurs, and effective support of our economy, and a coherent medical system from coast to coast to coast instead of the chaos that is now, and and and... I'm getting ahead of myself...)
Interesting days ahead.
Many good points 👍 however...
We don't need to 'reinvest' in entrepreneurs - we need to have politicians and regulators and tax collectors GET THE HELL OUT OF THE ENTREPRENEUR's WAY!!! Let entrepreneurs do what they do best!
Also.
We need a LOT LESS government 'support' for our economy. As Jen points out with her coined term 'octopus economy's, that's just about all we have left in 🇨🇦 - a 'government-supported economy; that is actually not a real economy at all.
Also.
Radically flattening and decentralizing the management and delivery of health care is what's needed. This country is much too big to centralize anything, particularly health care.
Otherwise your points look good to me!
Re-investing in entrepreneurship can be done by incentivizing them to do what they do. Under Trudeau and Freeland ‘investing’ has come to mean government spending. That needs to change. Government needs to create the proper climate for entrepreneurs not spend our tax dollars picking winners and losers and doing a bad job of it.
Agreed. The proper climate is for government to be as invisible as possible in taxation & regulation.
Entrepreneurs are encouraged to take chances when they see less regulatory hoops and oppressive taxes to overcome.
They have a good idea that they make/provide and sell at a decent profit without having a zillion rules and predatory taxation to discourage them from doing so.
I think it was Trevor Tombe who discovered that corporate welfare is so extensive with this government that corporate tax could be cut in half if they removed it.
Talk about picking winners and losers
Absolutely. Create the environment and get out of the way.
Cheers!
Create the environment BY getting out of the way.
Cheers!
Trudy for PM. You have my vote. I think any party right now with that platform would clean up.
“Trudy for PM.” haha
When Saint Paul (Paul the Apostle) turns against you, Justin should know he is toast. Can Mark Carney turn himself into Saint Mark, and save the Liberal Party? Not a chance. Forget about it. This group is beyond rescue. Put a fork in them. Any new Liberal leader has to carry on his/her back every incompetent Liberal member of Parliament. How many is that? Just about all of them. Time to hit the road Justin. Take the walk, in the snow or sand but just take the walk.
No walk, we want to kick him out in an election, and his Liebranodips, his personal brand. Glued together from his many lies, that is his personal brand, a dung ball.
Another question to ask is, why would anyone of any stature, like Carney, want to sign on to what would still be an embarrassing loss? The Liberal Party's problem ever since Trudeau the First, is their perennial hunt for a "saviour" leader. Ask Ignatieff how that worked.
The bigger question is why do people think Carney is such a great candidate? The only people who think that are the press (and they have not been swift to pick up the public mood) and hard core Liberals who will vote for them no matter what. Carney gets you downtown Toronto, that’s it. In addition, he was a central banker in charge during the massive asset inflation which made the rich richer and the poor poorer. He is a far more compromise candidate in this environment than the experts are willing to consider.
I suspect the other stakeholder that thinks Carney would be ideal is Pierre Poilievre.
Replacing Trudeau with a central banker would be a Christmas in July.
It is the eternal quest for the "one" who can walk on water and not get the bottom of his feet wet.
This is a quote today from His Godliness. "I hear people's concerns and frustrations. These are not easy times and it is clear I and my entire Liberal team have much more hard work to do," Trudeau told reporters in Vancouver.
"My focus is on your success and that's where it's going to stay," he added.
I feel like I am a passenger on the Titanic.
Great piece.
I'm of the mind that the likely savage beating that the LPC takes in the election will be good for them (should they survive it) but I shudder at the thought that the next 4-5 years will just be that the CPC takes power, makes things worse, runs out of scapegoats, and the LPC returns with a campaign based solely on "hey, don't ya miss the days when it was our team making things worse instead of them?"
Stand fast outside the black gates. Let the earth crack open and swallow the evil liberal hoards, returning them to the filthy, stench filled pit from whence they came forth.