Her terrible performance on stage was, if nothing else, consistent with how the Trudeau government approaches every issue: a comms plan instead of an action plan
I agree with the argument that Joly's performance is downstream of the approach of the Trudeau government as a whole - that is, words are viewed as actions and statements of intent are viewed as accomplishments.
I'll take this one step further. Just as Joly is downstream from Trudeau, the Prime Minister is downstream from our political class as a whole. Trudeau and Joly are merely today's most crystallized and perfected version of the species.
Some time ago, I was talking to a government member of a provincial legislature about a problem faced by those operating businesses in a sector of the provincial economy.
He was genuinely puzzled, saying "that problem's been solved."
I asserted that it had not been - that it was still a problem.
His response: "But we made an announcement about it last year. I was there."
I tried to explain the difference between an announcement and a solution to a public policy problem.
That's kinda it right there, eh? A whole political class that have come to see themselves as "observers" and "communicators". The whole system seems designed that way-- I don't know how you change it. :(
Several items will help. One party in power for a generation. It must not be a party connected to "progressivism", Discrimination-Ignorance-Exclusivity, nor fiscal illiteracy nor fiscal irresponsibility, nor eco-fanaticism. That rules out Lieberrals, NDP, Greens, BlocQ. AND a thousand Matt Gurneys and a thousand Jen Gersons to keep bullwhipping them into shape. AND a politically literate and keenly observant electorate to assist the Matt Gurneys and Jen Gersons. Which in turn means demolishing and rebuilding the education system - meaning the staffing - from daycare to advanced university degrees.
I don’t think any level of government in this country actually DOES things. I’ve felt like the last decade we’ve got nothing accomplished as a nation. Zilch. Nobody works anymore. Just talk, spin, rinse, repeat.
The fact that Trudeau is, honestly, dumb, is underrated as an explanatory factor. Sure he might IQ test above 100, but we all know that, if he came to our house as a regular dinner party guest, we would soon be rolling our eyes at thoughtless platitudes and drivel.
Melanie Joly is definitely reflective of the overall Trudeau government, and that's a consequence of Trudeau himself. He's structured the party and government around himself: decisions are centralized and government is micromanaged through his PMO. He's consistently pushed out other Liberals who could pose a threat to his leadership. Melanie Joly is at Foreign Affairs because she fits Trudeau's image of how he wants his government to look, and because she takes her cues from Trudeau and the PMO.
Increasing centralization of power in the PMO is not a new thing - Harper was a control freak, Chretien had a tight grip on his caucus until he left and we saw the unconstrained centrifugal forces rip them apart under Martin. What's different with Trudeau is that he's not competent, and it's evidenced by the dysfunction emanating throughout the federal government that's run through his office. Louis XIV once said "Apres moi, le deluge". Trudeau's got an ego to match, and he might accurately borrow the motto: once he leaves the Liberal Party leadership, there won't be much left of a political party that he reconfigured to serve him.
I just renewed my subscription. Not bc I agree w your pov (which I do) but bc you reminded me of the importance of questioning all our politicians and wannabes and holding them to account.
I would add that more than any other government in my lifetime PMJT's is all about the announcements and not actions. Or as I like to put it: "PMJT will say whatever it takes".
I honestly think he can't really tell the difference between his own self-interests and priorities and those of the country as a whole. It seems like they think others are just wrong or mistaken and need to be convinced to get on board with what the Libs have decided.
I guess it's one kind of leadership, but you'd better actually be the smartest person in the room if you're going to be the kindergarten teacher.
Trudeau is not smart in the intelligent sort of way. He is possessed of a low animal cunning that makes him an successful politician but that's it. (I borrowed that from Forsyth, *The Dogs of War*, describing a corrupt African despot during the civil war in Nigeria.)
Agreed that he is not particularly intelligent, is extremely self absorbed and an utter narcissist but what is most problematic, to the utter detriment of the country and Canadians, is his Messiah complex combined with the true believer conviction of his disastrous socialist, progressive, woke beliefs. If he was only in it for power he'd have abandoned many of the horribly flawed policy choices he has made given their rank unpopularity now. He hasn't because he is so convinced he is on the right path and will go down in history as a saviour. He won't. He'll go down in history as the most incompetent Canadian prime minister and Joly the most incompetent foreign minister.
"They may be honestly and sincerely confused on that point, victims of their own messaging plans. They’ve spun us so much they may have lost their own bearings."
Put another way - they believe their own bullshit :-) To some degree this happens with all gov'ts which have been in power too long. But this gov't has taken it to previously unseen heights :-(
It’s relieving to read someone say that talking about a thing is not the same as doing a thing when it comes to governing Canada…and then I think how bad does it have to be, that I want a journalist to write what has been worrying me for years, and what should be obvious to the people supposedly governing the country.
Justin crashes Trumps party in Florida so ‘all’s good Canada! I’ve got this!’ Man! I can see him squirming from here. Then the big meeting here with the opposition leaders. Comes out and blasts Poillievre for not towing ‘his’ line! Trudeau wants to be Captain of team Canada,while the ‘team’ doesn’t. Elizabeth May needs to transition to a new job. Circus while the world(US) watches. Please,let there be an election,soon
This particular government has been "style over substance" from Day One.
Literally.
The "because it is 2015" comment was pure virtue signal, Trudeau was strongly hinting that he was improving things by insisting on a 50/50 balance in genitalia around his cabinet table - when what he was actually doing was artificially restricting the ability for males to serve in his cabinet to approx 1/10 chances of being in cabinet, while the women among the Liberal caucus had approx a 1/3 chance of being in cabinet.
....because he had to work with "who got elected", as all leaders do.
For the record, Harper's last cabinet had 12 females. Trudeau's first cabinet had 15 females.
What an amusing piece, Matt, if it wasn't so serious a situation. You accurately described what Liberal politics turned into shortly after 2015: a government so incapable of understanding what they are supposed to be doing as a government they developed a manner of speaking which they think conceals it. Their real record of accomplishments will consist only of feats of bribery issued before elections. We can hope they'll deservedly lose party status at the next election for a couple of generations because that's a minimal guess as to how long it will take to fix the country.
What you have described is nothing new for us who have listened and endured this despicable bunch of non-performers for 9+ years. It's just that Joly is not as smooth at the manner of the non-message as her boss Justin. I've heard her before, sounding exactly like a Grade 10 student delivering an ill-memorized speech on a subject she knows nothing about. And yes, she is a total enbarrassment as a Minister of a G-7 nation.
But so are they all. They all speak in public in mostly the same type of code, dancing lightly just above or below or through coherence, never committing, never stating facts, providing disinformation, preferably with a guileless, pleasantly vacant expression. Some have their own nuances such as the patronizing sarcasm of a Freeland or the rumpled earnestness of a Guilbeault. But the result is the same: a frustrated audience.
I know why Anita Anand was moved out of the public eye. She never quite got the hang of Liberal-speak. In Europe a couple of years ago with her boss Justin, she clearly made promises Canada would raise defence spending to 2 % in the near future. Europeans were listening but it wasn't long before they realized it was clearly a lie. And our Dear Leader and his government can't be noticed to be uttering lies now, can they?
I think that the problem is not our politicians. That's a handy excuse. This has not been a priority for most Canadains. No government has prioritized it or done a good job, at least not since the 50s or so. That should tell us something. The problem isn't politicians it's political will of the public.
And yes, it's very popular for the audience of the line and of Justin Ling, who do great work. But how broadly popular is it? So I get the moral outrage, and I personally believe we should do more, but I also haven't heard much from the commentaries about how to get large scale buy in. If you poll Canadians and say should we do more, I bet most would say yes. If you poll Canadians and say we are hiking the GST by a percent to do more, how would that affect the numbers? Are we ready as a country to spend the money and put our soldiers into battle? I'm not so sure. And that's where we need to hold the mirror up to ourselves. Because the problem is not the politicians. And please, it's definitely not a Liberal versus conservative problem. The problem is you and I.
Perhaps the Trudeau government could stop wasting money on ridiculous vote-buying adventures; stop directing funds to those on their “friends and family plan” for contracts, loans, graft/grift and other plums; and direct it toward projects that actually benefit all Canadians so that the GST wouldn’t have to be raised. This is the most irresponsible, incompetent, wasteful government in the history of Canada.
Your mistake there though is thinking that government investment in projects that benefit all Canadians actually will benefit Canadians. Government is notoriously bad at investing in useful things. They should just let ordinary Canadians invest their money in things that will return profits. That will benefit all Canadians instead of being wasted on trying to plan the economy or subsidize an industrial strategy.
You’re correct about the notoriety of government investing bozo moves. I meant Investing tax dollars in our underfunded armed forces and border security - things that they’re supposed to be doing.
The truth is, it is always SOMEONE ELSE'S responsibility to fix whatever; Canadians are so useless when it comes to voting: they bloody well don't think!
No one is willing to accept the responsibility to do the hard work or pay the awful price to fix "X" or "Y" or ..... Until the electorate is willing to look in the mirror and say, "Damn! It's my fault that politician A or B or ... was elected and I believed the sucker. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me so damnit, I am so ashamed!"
Even among Canadians who insist that geopolitics and proper military funding IS their priority, it's almost always not.
The reason I say this is that when it comes to where that money should come from, the answer isn't "raise taxes on me and people like me to pay for it", it's inevitably to cut funding from something they don't like and would cut funding for anyway. It's like people who say reducing carbon emissions is a priority and are willing to have it cost them as much as $100/year to do that.
If someone is not prepared to put THEIR money into something, it's not a priority for them.
This is not the say that we don't have spending that needs to be cut. We do. But an unwillingness to bear the costs of a priority still indicates that it's not a priority. And we see this all the time in conservative circles. Military and geopolitics aren't the priorities... cutting spending (on things conservatives dislike) and cutting taxes are the priorities.
I don’t expect you will agree, nor does that matter, but there are good reasons why “in conservative circles” we don’t like several of the Trudeau Liberal programs. Some follow: 1) they are wasteful and serve no productive purpose other than to try to buy votes - ie. the GST “holiday” on beer and chips (yes, I know that’s not the entire list) and the $250 cheques to people earning $149,999. People earning that amount don’t need $250 as much as people earning minimum wage who need double or triple that. 2) they don’t do what they purport to do - ie. the carbon tax has not reduced carbon, but has been a cash cow for the Liberals; 3) the purchases and investments are rarely value for dollars, ie., the ridiculous gender-neutral n the armed forces uniforms and the sleeping bags that are not fit for purpose. That is the tip of the ice flow I’d like to put the Liberals on indefinitely.
I didn't say I liked Trudeau's programmes. I'm just saying I can tell where people's priorities lie based on what they are willing to pay for.
Conservative priorities (generally) are to cut programmes they don't like (and probably I don't like them either) and to cut taxes.
THAT is what conservatives have cared about for a long time because that's where they've put their effort and because they prioritize tax cuts over military spending.
I'm not saying conservatives are opposed to military spending. It's just not the priority.
In leftist circles they don't see military and geopolitics as priorities, either. They want to further cut spending on those, because they don't like them, and raise taxes (or raise the deficit) to "afford" spending on things they do like. Various forms of welfare, mostly.
Assuming we could find the young men willing to serve in a more muscular military -- which is a BIG assumption -- there is no path to spending meaningfully more on them that doesn't require cutting funding for aboriginals and health care because those are two really big-ticket items over which the feds have some control. They spend far more on the former than the Treaties specifically require but now that they have established a pattern of extravagance and not defending land claims, efforts to cut back will probably result in further defeat in Court and ructions in the field, even close to home near cities. So not likely any savings there. (Spending on natives is 2x that of defence, and for not much visible improvement in the well-being of the people on whom the money is supposedly spent.) And Canadians are not ever going to agree to spend less tax money on healthcare. They want more. Fixing the family doctor crisis is the current Big Ask. And free drugs and dentistry.
Even if conservatives don't like spending money on those two areas and would cheerfully cut them, politically they can't. So we will just bumble along until something bad happens....and then capitulate like France did in 1940. It wasn't a bad strategy. France did pretty well out of the war, you know. When you travel around France you see the cenotaphs from the two wars in all the little towns. 1914-18 the names go on for rows and rows and rows, a million in total. 1940-44 there are like a dozen names in a moderate-sized town. France was occupied but the Germans paid in cash and didn't loot, rape, burn fields, or expropriate private property except for punishment of saboteurs and people who sheltered Jews -- and the French didn't shelter very many. There was no bombing except by the *Allies* trying to destroy the rail network and the U-boat pens and later to drive the Germans out of Normandy...but that only went from 6 June to 25 August 1944. Most of the ground fighting was in the countryside, other than Caen which was demolished. Paris was untouched. Surrendering has its merits if you don't piss off the occupier too much with Resistance activities. (After the war, everyone pretended they were in the Resistance and nobody collaborated. Yeah, sure.)
I don't mean to run down the French soldiers who fought bravely to hold the Germans off long enough that the British could evacuate their troops from Dunkirk. And the people in the countryside were very kind and courageous helping downed Allied fliers escape back to England. But the French government was totally demoralized and the political will to resist just collapsed. That's what the Canadian political class would do, too.
It's difficult to imagine what hostile ideology or religious fanaticism would stir Canadians enough to take up arms to preserve existential Canadian values. If Nazism couldn't get the French to fight, what would get Canada to fight?
I am of the age that the only 'benefit' I get from the federal government is the carbon tax rebate, which does not cover my carbon tax charges because I have a natural gas furnace (I do not own a car). I am looking forward, someday, to CPP, but I have paid into that my entire working life. I guess, to be fair, they also provide a bit of funding to healthcare.
You are right. Canadians won't vote to shift spending priorities away from what they are now until there is a crisis. It's hard to imagine what actually would. Economic collapse where we couldn't service debt which caused a run on the currency maybe. It's hard to imagine any foreign invasion that would cause us to pony up soldiers to repel it. If the world cut us loose from the NATO mutual defence pact I doubt if Canadians would actually care. It's going to be more likely other countries that get invaded and call for help from us, than we get invaded and need help from others. We're like the homeowner who doesn't want to pay for a municipal fire department because all the fires happen in poor neighbourhoods where drunk and stoned people smoke in bed.
I do think we need to increase military spending. We are unable to defend ourselves and the world is much more dangerous than it was for most of my life.
Well said. It is obvious that Canada needs a way to get rid of a rogue government. The honour system of quitting over an $8.00 glass of orange juice is over. Interfering with the Supreme Court by the PM should be the end of any government.
Well done, Matt. You've articulated the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau to a T. It's shameful that he has been able to continue this dysfunction for 9 years with the blessing of the Canadian Parliamentary system.
As powerful as the PMO is, remember the civil service is out of control and the Cons will be stuck with it, and if they ever bring in Doge, the snivelling servants, will do everything it can to kabosh the same. We have a very big problem in this country. There are so many issues it is hard to figure out what to deal with first, as there are fires everywhere. One, I would like to see lawyers hired to expedite the overstaying visa people and designate a special federal court to do nothing but work with non unionized staff , 12-16 hours a day shipping them out.
The federal public service is not out of control. In fact, the senior ranks of the federal public service have demonstrated that they do exactly what the government demands of them, albeit not terribly well.
We would be much better served if the federal public service hired for independent thinking and competence. And imposed real accountability on the senior decision makers.
Mind you, they see precisely the same thing from our politicians , who have seldom liked being held accountable between elections (and even then they don’t like it!)
Which is why I believe that the problem resides firmly with our (increasingly Leninist) political class. Both Liberals and Conservatives; we don’t know how the NDP would manage because we’ve never seen fit to grant them a governing majority.
You are so right about the civil service being out of control. I was one for a few years during the Harper era (felt like an impecunious girl stripping and hooking to pay for tuition - “yes Minister” - and most of the people above me were adamant that nothing Harper proposed would get implemented.
I spotted trouble coming for Canadians away back when Trudeau was running the 2015 election campaign that would propel the Liberals from exile to government. The people were ready for change but got duped by messaging over substance. Complicit in this was the legacy media who happily fed the messaging to voters and couldn’t wait for our first taste of dynasty politics to match the big Kennedy clan or Bush and Clinton families.
The Liberals have been honing the messaging and non-answers ever since There are sporadic glimpses of honesty every now and then. Minister Blair can at least make an attempt to loop around the BS and it is usually a refreshing admission of falling short on military procurement and recruitment.
As for Minister Joly, she is boxed into an unfortunate corner. Justin Ling’s first impression of Joly becoming Global Affairs Minister was to contact a senior Liberal to ask WHY? Why is this a match of skills for one of the most senior and prestigious cabinet positions?
Her skills for diplomacy and geopolitics aren’t obvious and Joly’s previous cabinet jobs haven’t smothered her in glorious reviews. So here we are. Her musings on the Gaza crisis are a mumbo jumbo fence straddling disaster. (I’m still waiting for her to apologize for blaming the IDF for bombing the hospital when it was an errant Hamas rocket.) Running off to China earlier this year while a judicial inquiry looks into Chinese meddling in our domestic affairs seemed foolish. I won’t bore readers with any more.
We may agree that Joly needs to be shuffled out, but to what? What other cabinet positions would be seen as a lateral move or better? Finance? God help us if Joly becomes Minister of Finance.
I completely agree, Darcy, I commented on the vacuous word salads in 2015 & the Trudeau’s complete lack of credentials. The MSM endlessly promoted him, fawned and bowed.
The Liberals *did* run a substantive campaign in the 2015 election. They ran on major policies from cannabis legislation to the Canada Child Benefit to the false promise of electoral reform. I am not sure that the Liberals had a platform that was actually more substantive than that of the NDP or the Greens, but their 2015 campaign success was not wholly a vibes-based outcome.
The Liberals and the Party just haven't learned. People are tired- someone in the PMO has to catch on. Can't someone just whisper in their collective ear-" Just cut the bullshit"
What’s the point in flushing Joly when there is no talent to replace her with. At least she provides some moderate form of entertainment and serves as reminder to thinking Canadians that we need to flush this whole batch of virtue signalling self inflated ideologues in the next election into the rightful obscurity they so richly deserve.
I agree with the argument that Joly's performance is downstream of the approach of the Trudeau government as a whole - that is, words are viewed as actions and statements of intent are viewed as accomplishments.
I'll take this one step further. Just as Joly is downstream from Trudeau, the Prime Minister is downstream from our political class as a whole. Trudeau and Joly are merely today's most crystallized and perfected version of the species.
Some time ago, I was talking to a government member of a provincial legislature about a problem faced by those operating businesses in a sector of the provincial economy.
He was genuinely puzzled, saying "that problem's been solved."
I asserted that it had not been - that it was still a problem.
His response: "But we made an announcement about it last year. I was there."
I tried to explain the difference between an announcement and a solution to a public policy problem.
It was futile.
And he was not a Liberal.
I think the mistake is believing that the government can actually solve any problem whose solution is non-trivial.
That's kinda it right there, eh? A whole political class that have come to see themselves as "observers" and "communicators". The whole system seems designed that way-- I don't know how you change it. :(
Several items will help. One party in power for a generation. It must not be a party connected to "progressivism", Discrimination-Ignorance-Exclusivity, nor fiscal illiteracy nor fiscal irresponsibility, nor eco-fanaticism. That rules out Lieberrals, NDP, Greens, BlocQ. AND a thousand Matt Gurneys and a thousand Jen Gersons to keep bullwhipping them into shape. AND a politically literate and keenly observant electorate to assist the Matt Gurneys and Jen Gersons. Which in turn means demolishing and rebuilding the education system - meaning the staffing - from daycare to advanced university degrees.
I don’t think any level of government in this country actually DOES things. I’ve felt like the last decade we’ve got nothing accomplished as a nation. Zilch. Nobody works anymore. Just talk, spin, rinse, repeat.
So it is worse than I guessed. The last sentence is really important.
The fact that Trudeau is, honestly, dumb, is underrated as an explanatory factor. Sure he might IQ test above 100, but we all know that, if he came to our house as a regular dinner party guest, we would soon be rolling our eyes at thoughtless platitudes and drivel.
And we wouldn't invite him back.
I feel like I wouldn’t tolerate his ridiculousness long enough to ever want to invite him.
Certainly not now!
Melanie Joly is definitely reflective of the overall Trudeau government, and that's a consequence of Trudeau himself. He's structured the party and government around himself: decisions are centralized and government is micromanaged through his PMO. He's consistently pushed out other Liberals who could pose a threat to his leadership. Melanie Joly is at Foreign Affairs because she fits Trudeau's image of how he wants his government to look, and because she takes her cues from Trudeau and the PMO.
Increasing centralization of power in the PMO is not a new thing - Harper was a control freak, Chretien had a tight grip on his caucus until he left and we saw the unconstrained centrifugal forces rip them apart under Martin. What's different with Trudeau is that he's not competent, and it's evidenced by the dysfunction emanating throughout the federal government that's run through his office. Louis XIV once said "Apres moi, le deluge". Trudeau's got an ego to match, and he might accurately borrow the motto: once he leaves the Liberal Party leadership, there won't be much left of a political party that he reconfigured to serve him.
Centralization comes from the fact that Canadians don't respect leaders with anything less than absolute control over their party.
Chrétien still had ministerial responsibility.
As did Harper, at least to my recollection.
I just renewed my subscription. Not bc I agree w your pov (which I do) but bc you reminded me of the importance of questioning all our politicians and wannabes and holding them to account.
I would add that more than any other government in my lifetime PMJT's is all about the announcements and not actions. Or as I like to put it: "PMJT will say whatever it takes".
Trudeau doesn't care about the country. He cares only about himself. Once you realize that, everything he does makes sense.
I honestly think he can't really tell the difference between his own self-interests and priorities and those of the country as a whole. It seems like they think others are just wrong or mistaken and need to be convinced to get on board with what the Libs have decided.
I guess it's one kind of leadership, but you'd better actually be the smartest person in the room if you're going to be the kindergarten teacher.
Trudeau is not smart in the intelligent sort of way. He is possessed of a low animal cunning that makes him an successful politician but that's it. (I borrowed that from Forsyth, *The Dogs of War*, describing a corrupt African despot during the civil war in Nigeria.)
Agreed that he is not particularly intelligent, is extremely self absorbed and an utter narcissist but what is most problematic, to the utter detriment of the country and Canadians, is his Messiah complex combined with the true believer conviction of his disastrous socialist, progressive, woke beliefs. If he was only in it for power he'd have abandoned many of the horribly flawed policy choices he has made given their rank unpopularity now. He hasn't because he is so convinced he is on the right path and will go down in history as a saviour. He won't. He'll go down in history as the most incompetent Canadian prime minister and Joly the most incompetent foreign minister.
The two of them were made for each other.
"They may be honestly and sincerely confused on that point, victims of their own messaging plans. They’ve spun us so much they may have lost their own bearings."
Put another way - they believe their own bullshit :-) To some degree this happens with all gov'ts which have been in power too long. But this gov't has taken it to previously unseen heights :-(
It’s relieving to read someone say that talking about a thing is not the same as doing a thing when it comes to governing Canada…and then I think how bad does it have to be, that I want a journalist to write what has been worrying me for years, and what should be obvious to the people supposedly governing the country.
Justin crashes Trumps party in Florida so ‘all’s good Canada! I’ve got this!’ Man! I can see him squirming from here. Then the big meeting here with the opposition leaders. Comes out and blasts Poillievre for not towing ‘his’ line! Trudeau wants to be Captain of team Canada,while the ‘team’ doesn’t. Elizabeth May needs to transition to a new job. Circus while the world(US) watches. Please,let there be an election,soon
Elizabeth May should just retire. She isn't young anymore and would get a pension. She isn't actually very helpful in parliament.
She’s still waiting for the Senate appointment…
I guess she has a few years that she could serve in the senate.
Who gives a crap about Elizabeth May? I didn't even realize she was still an MP.
I love this comment.
This particular government has been "style over substance" from Day One.
Literally.
The "because it is 2015" comment was pure virtue signal, Trudeau was strongly hinting that he was improving things by insisting on a 50/50 balance in genitalia around his cabinet table - when what he was actually doing was artificially restricting the ability for males to serve in his cabinet to approx 1/10 chances of being in cabinet, while the women among the Liberal caucus had approx a 1/3 chance of being in cabinet.
....because he had to work with "who got elected", as all leaders do.
For the record, Harper's last cabinet had 12 females. Trudeau's first cabinet had 15 females.
NOT exactly a revolutionary change....
Trudeau has a 50/50 Cabinet. But, in reality they all act like pricks.
People forget that his pledge was based on Rachel Notely's first 50% female cabinet. But her caucus was also 50% female.
What an amusing piece, Matt, if it wasn't so serious a situation. You accurately described what Liberal politics turned into shortly after 2015: a government so incapable of understanding what they are supposed to be doing as a government they developed a manner of speaking which they think conceals it. Their real record of accomplishments will consist only of feats of bribery issued before elections. We can hope they'll deservedly lose party status at the next election for a couple of generations because that's a minimal guess as to how long it will take to fix the country.
What you have described is nothing new for us who have listened and endured this despicable bunch of non-performers for 9+ years. It's just that Joly is not as smooth at the manner of the non-message as her boss Justin. I've heard her before, sounding exactly like a Grade 10 student delivering an ill-memorized speech on a subject she knows nothing about. And yes, she is a total enbarrassment as a Minister of a G-7 nation.
But so are they all. They all speak in public in mostly the same type of code, dancing lightly just above or below or through coherence, never committing, never stating facts, providing disinformation, preferably with a guileless, pleasantly vacant expression. Some have their own nuances such as the patronizing sarcasm of a Freeland or the rumpled earnestness of a Guilbeault. But the result is the same: a frustrated audience.
I know why Anita Anand was moved out of the public eye. She never quite got the hang of Liberal-speak. In Europe a couple of years ago with her boss Justin, she clearly made promises Canada would raise defence spending to 2 % in the near future. Europeans were listening but it wasn't long before they realized it was clearly a lie. And our Dear Leader and his government can't be noticed to be uttering lies now, can they?
Excellent, June!
So what has changed? The Trudeau government was valid from day one but got away with it for 7 years.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I think that the problem is not our politicians. That's a handy excuse. This has not been a priority for most Canadains. No government has prioritized it or done a good job, at least not since the 50s or so. That should tell us something. The problem isn't politicians it's political will of the public.
And yes, it's very popular for the audience of the line and of Justin Ling, who do great work. But how broadly popular is it? So I get the moral outrage, and I personally believe we should do more, but I also haven't heard much from the commentaries about how to get large scale buy in. If you poll Canadians and say should we do more, I bet most would say yes. If you poll Canadians and say we are hiking the GST by a percent to do more, how would that affect the numbers? Are we ready as a country to spend the money and put our soldiers into battle? I'm not so sure. And that's where we need to hold the mirror up to ourselves. Because the problem is not the politicians. And please, it's definitely not a Liberal versus conservative problem. The problem is you and I.
Perhaps the Trudeau government could stop wasting money on ridiculous vote-buying adventures; stop directing funds to those on their “friends and family plan” for contracts, loans, graft/grift and other plums; and direct it toward projects that actually benefit all Canadians so that the GST wouldn’t have to be raised. This is the most irresponsible, incompetent, wasteful government in the history of Canada.
Your mistake there though is thinking that government investment in projects that benefit all Canadians actually will benefit Canadians. Government is notoriously bad at investing in useful things. They should just let ordinary Canadians invest their money in things that will return profits. That will benefit all Canadians instead of being wasted on trying to plan the economy or subsidize an industrial strategy.
You’re correct about the notoriety of government investing bozo moves. I meant Investing tax dollars in our underfunded armed forces and border security - things that they’re supposed to be doing.
OK, that's another story. Public goods that only the government can provide. Check.
Mike, I agree wholeheartedly.
The truth is, it is always SOMEONE ELSE'S responsibility to fix whatever; Canadians are so useless when it comes to voting: they bloody well don't think!
No one is willing to accept the responsibility to do the hard work or pay the awful price to fix "X" or "Y" or ..... Until the electorate is willing to look in the mirror and say, "Damn! It's my fault that politician A or B or ... was elected and I believed the sucker. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me so damnit, I am so ashamed!"
Even among Canadians who insist that geopolitics and proper military funding IS their priority, it's almost always not.
The reason I say this is that when it comes to where that money should come from, the answer isn't "raise taxes on me and people like me to pay for it", it's inevitably to cut funding from something they don't like and would cut funding for anyway. It's like people who say reducing carbon emissions is a priority and are willing to have it cost them as much as $100/year to do that.
If someone is not prepared to put THEIR money into something, it's not a priority for them.
This is not the say that we don't have spending that needs to be cut. We do. But an unwillingness to bear the costs of a priority still indicates that it's not a priority. And we see this all the time in conservative circles. Military and geopolitics aren't the priorities... cutting spending (on things conservatives dislike) and cutting taxes are the priorities.
I don’t expect you will agree, nor does that matter, but there are good reasons why “in conservative circles” we don’t like several of the Trudeau Liberal programs. Some follow: 1) they are wasteful and serve no productive purpose other than to try to buy votes - ie. the GST “holiday” on beer and chips (yes, I know that’s not the entire list) and the $250 cheques to people earning $149,999. People earning that amount don’t need $250 as much as people earning minimum wage who need double or triple that. 2) they don’t do what they purport to do - ie. the carbon tax has not reduced carbon, but has been a cash cow for the Liberals; 3) the purchases and investments are rarely value for dollars, ie., the ridiculous gender-neutral n the armed forces uniforms and the sleeping bags that are not fit for purpose. That is the tip of the ice flow I’d like to put the Liberals on indefinitely.
I didn't say I liked Trudeau's programmes. I'm just saying I can tell where people's priorities lie based on what they are willing to pay for.
Conservative priorities (generally) are to cut programmes they don't like (and probably I don't like them either) and to cut taxes.
THAT is what conservatives have cared about for a long time because that's where they've put their effort and because they prioritize tax cuts over military spending.
I'm not saying conservatives are opposed to military spending. It's just not the priority.
We do need to increase military spending. The world is becoming very dangerous.
In leftist circles they don't see military and geopolitics as priorities, either. They want to further cut spending on those, because they don't like them, and raise taxes (or raise the deficit) to "afford" spending on things they do like. Various forms of welfare, mostly.
Assuming we could find the young men willing to serve in a more muscular military -- which is a BIG assumption -- there is no path to spending meaningfully more on them that doesn't require cutting funding for aboriginals and health care because those are two really big-ticket items over which the feds have some control. They spend far more on the former than the Treaties specifically require but now that they have established a pattern of extravagance and not defending land claims, efforts to cut back will probably result in further defeat in Court and ructions in the field, even close to home near cities. So not likely any savings there. (Spending on natives is 2x that of defence, and for not much visible improvement in the well-being of the people on whom the money is supposedly spent.) And Canadians are not ever going to agree to spend less tax money on healthcare. They want more. Fixing the family doctor crisis is the current Big Ask. And free drugs and dentistry.
Even if conservatives don't like spending money on those two areas and would cheerfully cut them, politically they can't. So we will just bumble along until something bad happens....and then capitulate like France did in 1940. It wasn't a bad strategy. France did pretty well out of the war, you know. When you travel around France you see the cenotaphs from the two wars in all the little towns. 1914-18 the names go on for rows and rows and rows, a million in total. 1940-44 there are like a dozen names in a moderate-sized town. France was occupied but the Germans paid in cash and didn't loot, rape, burn fields, or expropriate private property except for punishment of saboteurs and people who sheltered Jews -- and the French didn't shelter very many. There was no bombing except by the *Allies* trying to destroy the rail network and the U-boat pens and later to drive the Germans out of Normandy...but that only went from 6 June to 25 August 1944. Most of the ground fighting was in the countryside, other than Caen which was demolished. Paris was untouched. Surrendering has its merits if you don't piss off the occupier too much with Resistance activities. (After the war, everyone pretended they were in the Resistance and nobody collaborated. Yeah, sure.)
I don't mean to run down the French soldiers who fought bravely to hold the Germans off long enough that the British could evacuate their troops from Dunkirk. And the people in the countryside were very kind and courageous helping downed Allied fliers escape back to England. But the French government was totally demoralized and the political will to resist just collapsed. That's what the Canadian political class would do, too.
It's difficult to imagine what hostile ideology or religious fanaticism would stir Canadians enough to take up arms to preserve existential Canadian values. If Nazism couldn't get the French to fight, what would get Canada to fight?
I am of the age that the only 'benefit' I get from the federal government is the carbon tax rebate, which does not cover my carbon tax charges because I have a natural gas furnace (I do not own a car). I am looking forward, someday, to CPP, but I have paid into that my entire working life. I guess, to be fair, they also provide a bit of funding to healthcare.
You are right. Canadians won't vote to shift spending priorities away from what they are now until there is a crisis. It's hard to imagine what actually would. Economic collapse where we couldn't service debt which caused a run on the currency maybe. It's hard to imagine any foreign invasion that would cause us to pony up soldiers to repel it. If the world cut us loose from the NATO mutual defence pact I doubt if Canadians would actually care. It's going to be more likely other countries that get invaded and call for help from us, than we get invaded and need help from others. We're like the homeowner who doesn't want to pay for a municipal fire department because all the fires happen in poor neighbourhoods where drunk and stoned people smoke in bed.
I do think we need to increase military spending. We are unable to defend ourselves and the world is much more dangerous than it was for most of my life.
Well said. It is obvious that Canada needs a way to get rid of a rogue government. The honour system of quitting over an $8.00 glass of orange juice is over. Interfering with the Supreme Court by the PM should be the end of any government.
Heh. $8 forced a resignation. But it was a $16 glass of OJ and that ended here political career
The orange juice was just the tip of the iceberg for Oda. She probably shouldn't have been a cabinet minister in the first place.
Possibly, but the country did spend six months talking about her orange juice.
Well done, Matt. You've articulated the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau to a T. It's shameful that he has been able to continue this dysfunction for 9 years with the blessing of the Canadian Parliamentary system.
Blame those who voted for him. I didn’t.
As powerful as the PMO is, remember the civil service is out of control and the Cons will be stuck with it, and if they ever bring in Doge, the snivelling servants, will do everything it can to kabosh the same. We have a very big problem in this country. There are so many issues it is hard to figure out what to deal with first, as there are fires everywhere. One, I would like to see lawyers hired to expedite the overstaying visa people and designate a special federal court to do nothing but work with non unionized staff , 12-16 hours a day shipping them out.
The federal public service is not out of control. In fact, the senior ranks of the federal public service have demonstrated that they do exactly what the government demands of them, albeit not terribly well.
We would be much better served if the federal public service hired for independent thinking and competence. And imposed real accountability on the senior decision makers.
Mind you, they see precisely the same thing from our politicians , who have seldom liked being held accountable between elections (and even then they don’t like it!)
Which is why I believe that the problem resides firmly with our (increasingly Leninist) political class. Both Liberals and Conservatives; we don’t know how the NDP would manage because we’ve never seen fit to grant them a governing majority.
You are so right about the civil service being out of control. I was one for a few years during the Harper era (felt like an impecunious girl stripping and hooking to pay for tuition - “yes Minister” - and most of the people above me were adamant that nothing Harper proposed would get implemented.
I spotted trouble coming for Canadians away back when Trudeau was running the 2015 election campaign that would propel the Liberals from exile to government. The people were ready for change but got duped by messaging over substance. Complicit in this was the legacy media who happily fed the messaging to voters and couldn’t wait for our first taste of dynasty politics to match the big Kennedy clan or Bush and Clinton families.
The Liberals have been honing the messaging and non-answers ever since There are sporadic glimpses of honesty every now and then. Minister Blair can at least make an attempt to loop around the BS and it is usually a refreshing admission of falling short on military procurement and recruitment.
As for Minister Joly, she is boxed into an unfortunate corner. Justin Ling’s first impression of Joly becoming Global Affairs Minister was to contact a senior Liberal to ask WHY? Why is this a match of skills for one of the most senior and prestigious cabinet positions?
Her skills for diplomacy and geopolitics aren’t obvious and Joly’s previous cabinet jobs haven’t smothered her in glorious reviews. So here we are. Her musings on the Gaza crisis are a mumbo jumbo fence straddling disaster. (I’m still waiting for her to apologize for blaming the IDF for bombing the hospital when it was an errant Hamas rocket.) Running off to China earlier this year while a judicial inquiry looks into Chinese meddling in our domestic affairs seemed foolish. I won’t bore readers with any more.
We may agree that Joly needs to be shuffled out, but to what? What other cabinet positions would be seen as a lateral move or better? Finance? God help us if Joly becomes Minister of Finance.
I completely agree, Darcy, I commented on the vacuous word salads in 2015 & the Trudeau’s complete lack of credentials. The MSM endlessly promoted him, fawned and bowed.
What's your explanation of the fact that the Liberals started the 2015 campaign in third place?
I think we all know why Joly is in Global Affairs.
Yesss we do 🤣
The Liberals *did* run a substantive campaign in the 2015 election. They ran on major policies from cannabis legislation to the Canada Child Benefit to the false promise of electoral reform. I am not sure that the Liberals had a platform that was actually more substantive than that of the NDP or the Greens, but their 2015 campaign success was not wholly a vibes-based outcome.
But the Liberals did eventually isolate themselves from critical grassroots feedback, as I explained in this column: https://www.readtheline.ca/p/stefan-klietsch-how-justin-trudeau
The Liberals and the Party just haven't learned. People are tired- someone in the PMO has to catch on. Can't someone just whisper in their collective ear-" Just cut the bullshit"
What’s the point in flushing Joly when there is no talent to replace her with. At least she provides some moderate form of entertainment and serves as reminder to thinking Canadians that we need to flush this whole batch of virtue signalling self inflated ideologues in the next election into the rightful obscurity they so richly deserve.