If I'm reading the author's through line correctly, the Liberals could realize some electoral gains by boorrowing the playbook of the 1990s Liberals and renew their electral fortunes by stealing 2024 CPC ideas and rebranding them as LPC 2024 Election Policies such as :
- axing the (carbon) tax and reversing the capital gains tax increase immediately (Because It's 2024)
- re-arming and replenishing our beleaguered military NOW not in 20 years (Canada Strong & Ready)
- releasing all details on foreign interference (Disinfectant Sunlight vs old Sunny Ways)
- dumping internet legislation & stopping funding canadian media (Embrace Digital Media)
- open up airline and telecom industries to greater competition (Better Service To Canadians)
Steal the CPC's thunder (and much of their electoral platform) going into the inevitable election.
Great idea, except it won't happen.
Justin and his inner circle you describe are True Believers in their own bullshit with levels of hubris approaching Donald J. Trump proportions. I don't think even electoral decimation will convince them that they are wrong - they will just blame CPC misinfo, much as Trump and his team blame the Dems.
I think Justin did his UN speech and went on Colbert as the first stage of his post-political career as the Celebrity Unofficial Opposition Leader of Canada (particularly if they come third or fourth in the election) much as Barack Obama has done in his post-Presidency years - witness his influence in the US even today. Even after the 2024 election and regardless of its outcome, Justin still has his trained seals in the Senate, Judiciary, and Commentariet to support his world view. He obviously loves the celebrity limelight, and electoral humiliation will not shake his belief in himself above all.
It all sounds wonderful. Bear one thing in mind. If you open Canada to even more foreign airline access, they will pick off the best routes, and leave the dregs. Because there is no transportation policy in Canada, a bunch of charter carriers will survive and small communities will get no service at all. I don't imagine it will be much different with phone service. It sounds a lot like a merging into the US. Hard no.
Why is any of that a problem? If not enough people want to fly from Hamilton to Lethbridge to make the service economic, why is that a “problem” Canada needs to fix using cabotage? Delta or United could fly YYZ <-> YYC and the government could provide free busses at either end if the poor dears in Leth and Ham couldn’t get to the airport on their own.
Sounds like a great new social program... free transportation by government. I thought everyone was complaining about excess government spending, and now you want to let Delta, Untied and American come in, undercut Air Canada and Westjet on all their higher margin routes, and wipe them out, and then raise prices due to lack of competition. .... may as well become the large 51st state.
Nothing to annex? If Trump gets in, he will make demands on our resources with zero environmental restrictions applied. We will cater to that whim or be economically destroyed. I would suggest that you could say we have already been economically annexed. How many stores do you see around that have a head office in Canada? It's not Canadian monopolists we're concerned about. The economic clout of the companies there moved in here and there were no legal grounds to justify stopping them. Now, they have wiped out or absorbed numerous Canadian stores to take over the market. But now, the profits leave.
US Airlines have fleets three- four times the size of Air Canada or Westjet. That have more than enough financial clout to undercut Canadian carriers; the same thing that Air Canada has done to start ups here for decades. Drive their cars.....it's not a short hike from Timmins to Toronto to catch a flight. And after Air Canada and Westjet are gone, the fares will go right back up. Same as always. Aviation is a predatory market.
I don't know what the right answer is. Maybe opening the gates and letting everyone in is the right answer. I don't know what it will do to our R&D future, but going back to the Arrow, we can see the brain drain that has come with not maintaining some Canadian businesses. See also Nortel which , if I'm not mistaken, had most of their tech grabbed up by Huawei.
We already can't defend ourselves. If we have nothing we can call our own, are we still a country?
I don't want to continue this back-and-forth. I will just say that you misunderstood "annex". It's a political term, not an economic one. Americans don't have any reason to annex our country into their republic. (It's illegal under international law unless the country being annexed agrees. You have to conquer it in a just war, not just move in.) They might covet our resources if they still need a lot of our rocks and trees for their long-departed heavy manufacturing and would like to get some of them cheap but that's not what it means to annex something. You just buy the stuff without having to govern the country it sits in. (Their environmental climate-change lobby doesn't want our tar-sands oil, by the way, unless there is no cheaper alternative.) I hope you are not trying to tell bright Canadian "brains" that they cannot move to the U.S. for better opportunities, as many of the Arrow engineers did.
You're thinking mostly of urban business/tourist travel. I'm betting that the resource wealth (BC-forest/mines, AB/SK - forest-mines-natural-gas-agriculture, MB - forest-agriculture-water, ON/QC forest-mines-natural gas-water, and the Maritimes - all of the above) will make a compelling case that small communities will sustain air travel. After all, they do make it work in the USA.
Ask anyone in Smithers, BC about their air service which was 737's from Pacific Western decades ago. Or Sydney Nova Scotia. The only way small community air service is maintained is if its subsidized. In the US, many of those small routes are forced on the airlines in return for slots and access elsewhere.
I accept that there may be a few in caucus who are certainly unfriendly towards Jews simply because they Jews. And I am glad that you have conceded that it isn't the entire caucus that is anti-semitic.
Yes they are - in spades. It is bred in their bones. The Liberal Party is run by a Quebec apparatchik who have been antisemitic for generations under the tutelage of the Catholic Church which dominated Quebec since 1759 and probably earlier. Even today Liberals look the other way when Quebec passes legislative abominations like the prohibition of religious apparel. I remember as a child a Quebec school teacher telling us that the Quebec premier (Duplessis?) had stated that the holocaust was an English lie. And a professor who wrote an history of Pierre Trudeau’s early life stated that Trudeau at an elite college had written and had performed an anti semitic play called “On s'est fait avoir”( They cheated (conned?) us.
There has been a seam of anti-Semitism in Quebec for years, that is true, but it is currently quite muted in political circles. One could make a similar argument about English Canada, as well. To use that to claim that the Liberal Party of Canada has anti-Semitism "bred in their bones" is quite the stretch.
The LPC is a national political party. Yes, it has often done very well in Quebec, but it also does well in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, and some parts of BC. Being a national party, it is influenced by opinions from across the country.
That's just because the federal government of all stripes are gutless, and always sucking up to those 71 seats. If it wouldn't so badly screw the Maritimes, I'd be happy to have another referendum about whether they're allowed to stay. They've become little more than a criminal empire.
Agree with you 100 %. But I’m a bit more sanguine about the Maritimes prospects on their own. Alaska doesn’t feel screwed up in spite on being separated from the lower 48. They would have choices about their future which I don’t feel they have now.
I'm inclined to agree with what @Rob Rowat wrote. Historical examples of anti-semitism could easily be used to pillory people with British antecedents (or those, like me, who have ancestors who came to Canada from other parts of Europe).
Are there people in the Liberal Caucus who, because of the views of their constituents, have made statements of condemnation WRT Israel's behaviour (without, I might add, being fair-minded enough to condemn, as well, the extremist acts perpetrated by Hamas and Hizbollah)?
Yes.
But I think we ought to be quite wary of tossing around accusations of innate and thoroughgoing anti-semitism.
While I can’t speak to Anglo Canadian antisemitism I can attest to how rampant blaming Jews for everything was in the Quebec French religious education system. And while this is anecdotal evidence, when I first went to an Ottawa university, I heard the word “zyklon B” whenever a Jewish student entered the common hall. This was my first exposure to English Canadian “humor”. Of course the priest supervising the room said nothing or maybe smiled.
And while the Liberal party does have elected members from Canada in addition to Quebec, it is still dominated by members from the latter nation. V
I grew up in Quebec and I completely agree with you. My Exhibit A would be Lionel Groulx, who still has a Metro station and a street named after him. My Exhibit be Camilien Houde, who also has a street named after him. While the religious influence has greatly waned, it has left some quite toxic residues.
Interesting article. However, I am going to need to see/hear the evidence for this claim:
It would not be out of character for Trudeau to insist on sticking around because he wants to be the one to wear the coming defeat, if anyone must.
One of several recurring themes during Junior's tenure is his complete inability/unwillingness to take responsibility for ANYTHING. When caught red-handed you can place bets on how long it will take for him to proclaim that WE ALL must do better. I am looking forward to his concession speech to see if he can finally act with grace for once.
Stephen Harper consistently refused to accept responsibility for any of a litany of scandals that happened in his government - which made it all the more surprising when he gave such a gracious concession speech on the night of his 2015 defeat.
Trudeau actually apologized for his own behaviour more times in the first year of government than Harper ever did in a decade of governing. So I think his inability to apologize in recent years is why he lost a bunch of former Liberal voters.
No, Stevie, the Face Painter apologized for Canada's ALLEGED sins, not for any (in)action of he or his government.
Just as one very intriguing idea, he apologized - obsequiously - for residential schools but never once acknowledged his own family's personal involvement in those institutions. T1 was Prime Minister and so he, too, is subject to the condemnation that the Face Painter has allocated to non-native Canadians, whether they had personal involvement or none. So, when is he going to acknowledge his own family's dereliction? Answer, never.
There is nothing for Canada as a country to apologize over the residential schools anyway. What was the Canadian government supposed to do, ignore the requests by the chiefs to provide schools, as it promised to under the Numbered Treaties? Should Macdonald have said, "Sorry, we think you would be better off left to starve in your tipis while you try to preserve your traditional way of life unsullied by literacy and modernity. Some day those of you who survive will thank us for not making you learn to read and write English."? We weren't going to not fence off the land for grazing and agriculture. If you want flush toilets, flour, and firearms, you have to assimilate yourself to some extent into the society that makes those things, if only to earn the cash income it takes to buy them. Or was the idea that all those things and more should be provided to the natives for free by the settler society that invented them? (Which is pretty much what we ended up doing.)
There was some abuse of course, much of it by older students against younger ones, but the main beef against the res schools today is the cultural genocide angle. There is actually no such thing as cultural genocide anyway, but how can you leave someone in a stone-age culture when the modern world is everywhere around them? What would schooling have looked like if it *didn't* replace traditional hunter-gatherer-superstitious culture with reading, writing, and arithmetic (and manual and agricultural skills, which back then most settler kids had to know a lot about, too)?
People who criticize the idea of residential schools have to say what they would have done instead, knowing only what Macdonald knew back then. Got back into our boats and sailed back to England is not a useful suggestion.
You're conflating the initial setup of a residential school system from the 19th century with the 20th century kidnapping of Indigenous children, but it's the latter that tends to get the most criticism and attention in discussion of residential schools. While I don't support using the term "genocide" as many do to describe the latter, it was certainly a form of cultural extermination and a form of slavery that absolutely warranted government apologies and compensation (for which Harper rightly apologized in 2008).
That's just not true. Children were not kidnapped and they were not enslaved. Cultural extermination means whatever you want it to mean. How can you not assimilate a culture that wants the things that the dominant culture makes, but traditional pre-literate pre-scientific culture can't? Isn't all education of foreigners a form of assimilation? Don't we want immigrants to learn how to be Canadian? We certainly weren't going to regress to a stone-age culture just not to offend the indigenous people. Do you not think that your modern culture is "better" than the indigenous one? Would you have kept it for yourself and not shared it? Sharing it means you teach them to read and write English and learn arithmetic and manual skills relevant to a modern economy, and yes, dress and comport themselves to be like us. I'm not clear what it is you think we wiped out in our "cultural extermination" that should have been allowed to flourish.
You are using deliberately misleading and unnecessarily inflammatory language that misrepresents what the residential schools were about. Stephen Harper apologized for the sexual abuse that did occur at the schools, much of it student-on-student. We'll never know what really happened there -- you weren't there -- because school "survivors" were paid more if they said they were sexually abused than if they just had their knuckles rapped by a nun with a ruler. No one's testimonials were examined for truthfulness. But it became a convenient explanation for the terrible social-cultural conditions on Reserves and in urban downtowns that it was all Whitey's fault, even though only a minority of native children ever attended a residential school.
You haven't told me what you would have done to make the schools better in the 20th century. School attendance became compulsory for all students of all races as the concept of mandatory public education took hold in the provinces. Were you "kidnapped" or "enslaved" when you were sent off to school? Remember this is Canada. We do things on the cheap here. There was never enough tax money to provide free boarding school really well. Good enough for government work had to be good enough.
To very belatedly reply, here is some text from Harper's apology statement:
"The Government of Canada built an educational system in which very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes, often taken far from their communities. Many were inadequately fed, clothed and housed. All were deprived of the care and nurturing of their parents, grandparents and communities. First Nations, Inuit and Métis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools. Tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools and others never returned home."
No, that is false, as far as Trudeau's total record is concerned. He apologized for his own behaviour and for that of the Liberals in multiple instances early in his first years:
Trudeau has simply apologized more for personal or governing conduct than Harper ever did.
However, apologies for personal or governing behaviour have dried up since then. Whereas Harper embraced fully the image of the unapologetic alpha-male leader and pleased the Conservative base, Trudeau now tries to be both the unrepentant alpha-male and the soft feminist at the same, which satisfies almost no one.
Great article. The takeaway seems to be that a different man could have been a sunny ways Prime Minister in 2015 and then later in 2022 recognizing that the world had changed (or revealed itself) pivoted to a realistic view of the seriousness of the world.... but that Justin Trudeau isn't that man.
He still believes that his policies of 2015 are suited to the world of 2024.
Spot on. It is indeed plausible to argue that Mr Trudeau is locked in the past.
Michael Den Tandt's criticism of the Trudeau government's failure to rebuild our defence capabilities is also irrefutable in its logic. However, it would have been nice to hear--from a long-time friend of the Prime Minister and JT's former top advisor--why this government was utterly incapable of shifting gears on defence, despite all that has happened to us since late 2018?
There are two areas in which this government showed no interest or ability: the economy and defence. To extend the metaphor, "shifting gears" suggests that they were in a gear. They were not and are not. Despite all their fine words, this government was really stuck in neutral.
Boy it really is nostalgia all around. "Butts left the government in 2019"... Whether you kindly assume the readers know under the BIG cloud of SNC, thats quite the characterization. Nostalgia indeed. I agree, there is almost a given that after a certain time, there is a staleness to 3 term governments, but its much more than just he needs to re-invent himself. That might be possible if people see some credibility there, but he has kinda burned all that. I just cant bring myself to give him nor those around him any benefit of the doubt. So even if he really, really, really did become Justin 2.0, I dont think anyone would believe it at this point. Its too late.
He's always been the emperor without clothes. There is nothing to reinvent. Hence the nostalgia. It keeps the votes of the overly sentimental folks who still support him.
"not by going to war with Russia, but by much more actively preparing Canada for the new and more perilous world in which we now live". If Trump wins the election it's not impossible that he pulls the USA out of NATO. That could easily embolden Putin to attack a NATO ally and we will find ourselves actually at war with Russia. I understand that spending money on the military in peacetime seems unnecessary but.....
Article 5 doesn’t make anyone automatically at war with an attacker. All we pledge is that we will regard an attack on one as an attack on us all. That gives all the NATO signatories the *right* (as a causus belli) to declare war on the attacker. It doesn’t obligate us to. Each signatory is free to decide what response is “necessary.” It would certainly be no more than what each country would do if it was attacked itself. In Canada’s case, that response would be thoughts and a land acknowledgment (since we don’t do prayers anymore), an admonition in the strongest possible terms for all parties to respect DEI and affirm that transwomen are women and can’t be drafted......and that’s about it. Oh, and a ritual condemnation of Israel as a settler colonial state, to reduce the chance of opportunistic revolutionary unrest here at home. Perhaps some lockdowns and a tax increase. Never let a crisis go to waste.
If the US withdraws from NATO, the alliance is finished. Britain and France would have the nuclear capacity to tear off an arm (deGaulle’s famous phrase) and Poland and the Baltics would be feisty and plucky because they’ve actually lived under Russian dominion. But the other countries would simply not fight if the US doesn’t step up.
I'm not sure Colbert is that smart. He has had good vehicles and mentors but now he attracts nothing but an echo chamber of "progressives" who will laugh at any shots, however lame, about anyone perceived to be centrist or right. None of his schtick is smart anymore. He should be grateful Trump is running again so he has an easy target.
I think you are totally wrong that Trudeau is "sticking around because he is the one who wants to wear the defeat". This is the man who threw your friend Butts under the bus (too bad McGuinty did do that before he screwed up Ontario's electricity), dumped two women who were ethical and both smarter than he, who never owns up to his own mistakes but graciously gives us non-elites learning experiences. And to use Trump and Covid as excuses for 10 years of mismanagement is myopic at best.
Canada is better off without one of those women in the government, except that maybe we were safer with her inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. What is she up to these days, anyway?
Trudeau is going to stay on despite the polls, despite the fact he is actively disliked by the majority of Canadians. He reminds me of the guy who vehemently denied he had leprosy, despite the fact his nose and one ear had fallen off. It is nothing more than a vanity farewell. I would suggest to Justin, do not let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, that is if his ass has not yet fallen off.
Newsflash to Michael Den Tandt: You are one of the many people who should by now know extremely well that Justin Trudeau's genetics and character are not capable of him doing anything useful.
Making defence a priority would not make the Libs any more competent in achieving that priority. Not everything they want to do is bad, but everything they do, they do badly. That's the real problem.
As has been mentioned in The Line many times, the Trudeau government seems to think that making an announcement is enough. When they manage to actually deliver on an announcement, they almost always mess it up. It's quite remarkable, isn't it?
Michael, well said. The question is, how much worse does the international geopolitical situation have to get before this (or any future) government does something to show they take defence and security seriously. Many have commented on PMJTs responses to Colbert, but the one they have missed was his casual affirmation that he has "concerns" about the security on Canada's Arctic. With this attitude In a few years Russia and China will be playing "Kick the Can" in our back yard. Please have a read of the Naval Ass'n's paper "In Extremis" wherein we provide our perspectives. https://www.navalassoc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/In-Extremis-MR.pdf
> With this attitude In a few years Russia and China will be playing "Kick the Can" in our back yard.
They will not. For one, China just doesn't have that kind of navy. They'd like to have it, but their brand new submarine SANK while docked in the spring and they managed to cover it up until recently.
As far as Russia doing it, keep in mind that the US military sees our back yard as strategically important to them, meaning that if Canada isn't defending it, it to all purposes becomes American.
Canada *can* surrender our sovereignty by neglect ... if we do, we don't get to choose who we surrender it to, the Americans will decide that.
I'll wait for a military expert to correct me, but I'm really not particularly worried about icebreakers ... because that's a surface vessel and surface vessels are far easier to detect. Silent and undetectable submarines... well that's an obvious concern.
What concerns me about us abandoning the defence of our country isn't that we'll suffer strategic losses to China or Russia, it's that we'll suffer a loss of sovereignty and decision making to the Americans and at the end of the day, our interests are not perfectly aligned.
Large surface combatants, and I don’t mean icebreakers, would not be committed to the constricted treacherous waters of the Northwest Passage. There is no reason for submarines to get trapped in those waters, either. A sub’s mission is interdiction of sea commerce and attacking enemy military facilities using long-range missiles. There isn’t any of either in the High Arctic. CFB Cold Lake isn’t even in the “low arctic” Northwest Territories. It’s in Alberta. It’s more of a sovereignty issue. We can’t parry a challenge to our claimed sovereignty over it. Once the passage is ice-free, it will be an international waterway. That’s obvious. What’s up in the air is whether any of the high arctic land is worth fighting over. Whoever claims it will just inherit an eye-wateringly large welfare obligation and a raft of social problems..
If anyone successfully claims Canada's Arctic for their own they will most certainly not care about any welfare obligations or environmental concerns. The Indigenous population would be driven out. Slave labour from the lower classes of China, Russia, or even the United States would be imported to harvest the vast and enormous mineral and energy riches existing there.
Andrew, you make some good points. I read about that NUC boat which sank alongside. My concerns are about resources. I'm thinking that with the protection of their naval forces the Chinese and the Russians will go after our fish and minerals like they are doing in the western Pacific because there is no one there to stop them. I expect you have read, the Russian and Chinese navies are now operating in the North Pacific/Bering Sea. I have often wondered why we are not already States 51 - 64 and when that will happen.
Nostalgia has always been the name of the game for Trudeau. He's always wanted us to think of his father, whether it be intentional (focus on sex/gender issues, "just watch me," multiculturalism, love of China, arrogance towards to the west and just plain arrogance overall) to coincidences such as his family situation (number of kids, getting divorced while PM, etc). I absolutely expect him to make a comeback in a few years, just like dad did. I feel like he's not really his own person and never has been.
Justin Trudeau seems to actually be more like Harper than his own father in the strict sense of leading an incremental government. Pierre Trudeau certainly led an ambitious government, including or especially in his later years when he patriated the Constitution. Justin by contrast shied away from one of his bigger campaign promises (i.e. electoral reform) and he now seems to be devoid of any big ideas whatsoever.
They're not just failing to regroup on how to deliver on failed promises, but doubling down on solving last decade's problems. A lot less appetite for income-based redistribution (and similar progressive promises) in a world where renters scraping by on what were once good incomes see themselves paying for dental care for millionaire seniors, and Canada has found out it's not immune to immigration undermining support for safety nets. The bigger driver of inequality is now housing wealth (or put the other way high home prices), and the Liberals pretty explicitly want to keep the inequality while possibly taking the edges off of hardship for renters.
Immigration undermines support for safety nets everywhere. It’s actually one of the best reasons to have immigration: no country with mass immigration wants to expand its social welfare spending because immigrants rub your noses in the folly of welfare spending. The only catch is that for the effect to be really strong, the immigrants have to heavy claimants of the welfare benefits. So there is good and bad.
"It would not be out of character for Trudeau to insist on sticking around because he wants to be the one to wear the coming defeat, if anyone must."
(?) Surely you must be talking about some other public figure, not the king of evasion who never accepts responsibility for anything.
Even leaving this curious judgment aside, it's hard to take seriously a proposed solution to 'nostalgia,' and its failure to embrace 'major change and renewal,' that amounts to a lobbying pitch for the arms industry. Aren't Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman's share prices high enough for you already? What on Earth does this 'analysis' have to do with Canadian voters' legitimate grievances against the performance of the Trudeau government?
P.S. In the 1930s, Hitler solved Germany's unemployment problem by starting an immense rearmament program. There's nostalgia for you.
The fact is that the current world is very different from the one that followed the collapse of the USSR. Canada jumped on the "peace dividend" in a big way then. New threats to the democratic West have arisen and we cannot continue to pretend that they don't exist.
Before launching expensive new social programs, we need to look after the basics. One of those is the ability to defend ourselves and to contribute in a meaningful way to the collective defense of the West. We can do neither at the moment.
This is not purely the fault of the Trudeau government. Several governments before his have cut military expenditures. But the new threats have transpired during the tenure of his government and nothing has been done. This is a legitimate grievance against the performance of his government.
I have no quarrel with the claim that our military badly needs upgrading. My quarrel is with the role a former Liberal speechwriter (and unsuccessful Liberal candidate) chooses to have this self-evident fact play in his 'analysis' of why the federal Liberal leader is ignoring polls, and by inference the wishes of the Canadians whose interests said leader routinely claims he represents, and which are supposedly his sole motivation.
At bottom this article is more concerned about the fate of the Liberal Party than about the fate of the country. If the author honestly believes those disparate fates are inextricably bound together it wouldn't be too surprising: it's a common conceit among Liberals and is certainly shared by the Liberal leader. If polls are to be believed it isn't shared by voters, though; and perhaps that's why the understanding of the country's needs that informs this article coheres so poorly with the understanding that polls are reporting (thumbs up to military upgrades; thumbs down to the Liberals, and to the current Liberal leader in particular).
Canada spent its “peace dividend” long before the Cold War ended. How do you think we built up Medicare through the 70s and 80s and vastly expanded the welfare state?
With respect to the notion that Trudeau will stick around to "wear" the impending defeat, it does smack of the honourable. It is also smart politics. The Liberals will almost certainly be defeated in the next election. Why ask a new leader to carry that? It makes more sense to have Trudeau suffer the defeat. Not only is it almost entirely his doing, given his control over the party, but it will allow the Liberal Party of Canada to sweep the decks and bring in a completely new team. That team will then have several years in opposition to prepare for the time when the then governing party begins to wear thin.
As for defence spending, it has been apparent for several years that Canada needs to up its game in all areas: funding, procurement, recruitment, and strategy and planning. Though we know nothing about Poilievre's plans if and when he becomes PM, we can only hope that defence is at the top of the list.
I think Poilievre has admitted that the Tories can’t do much about defence spending either. There just isn’t a constituency in Canada that sees it as important enough to give up spending in other areas. (Edit: see Mark Kennedy below for an example.) War toys are *so-o-oo* expensive! Especially when all the ships have to be made in Quebec and the Maritimes and the vehicles in Ontario. Russia and China can’t be that bad, surely! And not enough Canadians want to be soldiers for us to spend 2% of GDP on them. Would you want to serve and possibly die for a country that teaches its schoolkids they live in an illegitimate racist colonialist settler state? Tampons in the men’s latrines turns off 10 times as many young guys as it might attract. The kind of men interested in soldiering know they have no future in a military with values like that.
Poilievre will axe the tax and, since he's made it clear that all our problems are caused by JT, there will be nothing left to fix. Who needs any policy beyond that?
I believe Pollievre HAS to have a deeper policy playbook, he just knows what is short, catchy, and easily repeatable so has been smart about how he's marketed himself. What I am eager to see, is how he brings people along for the journey who have been caught by the marketing side but don't really understand the policy side. (I look forward to the policy pdf from the conservatives!)
Poilievre has stated in the past that he does not want to reveal the Conservatives' policy proposals for fear of the Liberals "stealing" them and getting all the credit. It really is incomprehensible that they wouldn't have all sorts of people working on policies.
See BC politics for a perfect example of a poll-losing incumbent stealing from the other party’s policy manual to shore up public opinion. Sadly, it’s working.
Poilievre has been very noncommittal and lukewarm at best about meeting our NATO commitments. He seems more focused on lower taxes, reduce spending and waging culture war than facing the new geopolitical reality.
If I'm reading the author's through line correctly, the Liberals could realize some electoral gains by boorrowing the playbook of the 1990s Liberals and renew their electral fortunes by stealing 2024 CPC ideas and rebranding them as LPC 2024 Election Policies such as :
- axing the (carbon) tax and reversing the capital gains tax increase immediately (Because It's 2024)
- jettisoning anti-semite caucus & stop enabling terrorism here & abroad (Freedom & Democracy)
- re-arming and replenishing our beleaguered military NOW not in 20 years (Canada Strong & Ready)
- releasing all details on foreign interference (Disinfectant Sunlight vs old Sunny Ways)
- dumping internet legislation & stopping funding canadian media (Embrace Digital Media)
- open up airline and telecom industries to greater competition (Better Service To Canadians)
Steal the CPC's thunder (and much of their electoral platform) going into the inevitable election.
Great idea, except it won't happen.
Justin and his inner circle you describe are True Believers in their own bullshit with levels of hubris approaching Donald J. Trump proportions. I don't think even electoral decimation will convince them that they are wrong - they will just blame CPC misinfo, much as Trump and his team blame the Dems.
I think Justin did his UN speech and went on Colbert as the first stage of his post-political career as the Celebrity Unofficial Opposition Leader of Canada (particularly if they come third or fourth in the election) much as Barack Obama has done in his post-Presidency years - witness his influence in the US even today. Even after the 2024 election and regardless of its outcome, Justin still has his trained seals in the Senate, Judiciary, and Commentariet to support his world view. He obviously loves the celebrity limelight, and electoral humiliation will not shake his belief in himself above all.
It all sounds wonderful. Bear one thing in mind. If you open Canada to even more foreign airline access, they will pick off the best routes, and leave the dregs. Because there is no transportation policy in Canada, a bunch of charter carriers will survive and small communities will get no service at all. I don't imagine it will be much different with phone service. It sounds a lot like a merging into the US. Hard no.
Why is any of that a problem? If not enough people want to fly from Hamilton to Lethbridge to make the service economic, why is that a “problem” Canada needs to fix using cabotage? Delta or United could fly YYZ <-> YYC and the government could provide free busses at either end if the poor dears in Leth and Ham couldn’t get to the airport on their own.
Sounds like a great new social program... free transportation by government. I thought everyone was complaining about excess government spending, and now you want to let Delta, Untied and American come in, undercut Air Canada and Westjet on all their higher margin routes, and wipe them out, and then raise prices due to lack of competition. .... may as well become the large 51st state.
Nothing to annex? If Trump gets in, he will make demands on our resources with zero environmental restrictions applied. We will cater to that whim or be economically destroyed. I would suggest that you could say we have already been economically annexed. How many stores do you see around that have a head office in Canada? It's not Canadian monopolists we're concerned about. The economic clout of the companies there moved in here and there were no legal grounds to justify stopping them. Now, they have wiped out or absorbed numerous Canadian stores to take over the market. But now, the profits leave.
US Airlines have fleets three- four times the size of Air Canada or Westjet. That have more than enough financial clout to undercut Canadian carriers; the same thing that Air Canada has done to start ups here for decades. Drive their cars.....it's not a short hike from Timmins to Toronto to catch a flight. And after Air Canada and Westjet are gone, the fares will go right back up. Same as always. Aviation is a predatory market.
I don't know what the right answer is. Maybe opening the gates and letting everyone in is the right answer. I don't know what it will do to our R&D future, but going back to the Arrow, we can see the brain drain that has come with not maintaining some Canadian businesses. See also Nortel which , if I'm not mistaken, had most of their tech grabbed up by Huawei.
We already can't defend ourselves. If we have nothing we can call our own, are we still a country?
I don't want to continue this back-and-forth. I will just say that you misunderstood "annex". It's a political term, not an economic one. Americans don't have any reason to annex our country into their republic. (It's illegal under international law unless the country being annexed agrees. You have to conquer it in a just war, not just move in.) They might covet our resources if they still need a lot of our rocks and trees for their long-departed heavy manufacturing and would like to get some of them cheap but that's not what it means to annex something. You just buy the stuff without having to govern the country it sits in. (Their environmental climate-change lobby doesn't want our tar-sands oil, by the way, unless there is no cheaper alternative.) I hope you are not trying to tell bright Canadian "brains" that they cannot move to the U.S. for better opportunities, as many of the Arrow engineers did.
Cheers.
You're thinking mostly of urban business/tourist travel. I'm betting that the resource wealth (BC-forest/mines, AB/SK - forest-mines-natural-gas-agriculture, MB - forest-agriculture-water, ON/QC forest-mines-natural gas-water, and the Maritimes - all of the above) will make a compelling case that small communities will sustain air travel. After all, they do make it work in the USA.
Ask anyone in Smithers, BC about their air service which was 737's from Pacific Western decades ago. Or Sydney Nova Scotia. The only way small community air service is maintained is if its subsidized. In the US, many of those small routes are forced on the airlines in return for slots and access elsewhere.
Do you really believe that the caucus of the Liberal Party is "anti-semitic"? Surely that is not fair or accurate?
Just to be clear - I did not mean the entire caucus, but there are obvious segments of it that are openly so.
I accept that there may be a few in caucus who are certainly unfriendly towards Jews simply because they Jews. And I am glad that you have conceded that it isn't the entire caucus that is anti-semitic.
More than a few, AC, more than a few.
Yes they are - in spades. It is bred in their bones. The Liberal Party is run by a Quebec apparatchik who have been antisemitic for generations under the tutelage of the Catholic Church which dominated Quebec since 1759 and probably earlier. Even today Liberals look the other way when Quebec passes legislative abominations like the prohibition of religious apparel. I remember as a child a Quebec school teacher telling us that the Quebec premier (Duplessis?) had stated that the holocaust was an English lie. And a professor who wrote an history of Pierre Trudeau’s early life stated that Trudeau at an elite college had written and had performed an anti semitic play called “On s'est fait avoir”( They cheated (conned?) us.
There has been a seam of anti-Semitism in Quebec for years, that is true, but it is currently quite muted in political circles. One could make a similar argument about English Canada, as well. To use that to claim that the Liberal Party of Canada has anti-Semitism "bred in their bones" is quite the stretch.
The LPC is a national political party. Yes, it has often done very well in Quebec, but it also does well in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, and some parts of BC. Being a national party, it is influenced by opinions from across the country.
That's just because the federal government of all stripes are gutless, and always sucking up to those 71 seats. If it wouldn't so badly screw the Maritimes, I'd be happy to have another referendum about whether they're allowed to stay. They've become little more than a criminal empire.
Agree with you 100 %. But I’m a bit more sanguine about the Maritimes prospects on their own. Alaska doesn’t feel screwed up in spite on being separated from the lower 48. They would have choices about their future which I don’t feel they have now.
Good point.
I'm inclined to agree with what @Rob Rowat wrote. Historical examples of anti-semitism could easily be used to pillory people with British antecedents (or those, like me, who have ancestors who came to Canada from other parts of Europe).
Are there people in the Liberal Caucus who, because of the views of their constituents, have made statements of condemnation WRT Israel's behaviour (without, I might add, being fair-minded enough to condemn, as well, the extremist acts perpetrated by Hamas and Hizbollah)?
Yes.
But I think we ought to be quite wary of tossing around accusations of innate and thoroughgoing anti-semitism.
While I can’t speak to Anglo Canadian antisemitism I can attest to how rampant blaming Jews for everything was in the Quebec French religious education system. And while this is anecdotal evidence, when I first went to an Ottawa university, I heard the word “zyklon B” whenever a Jewish student entered the common hall. This was my first exposure to English Canadian “humor”. Of course the priest supervising the room said nothing or maybe smiled.
And while the Liberal party does have elected members from Canada in addition to Quebec, it is still dominated by members from the latter nation. V
I grew up in Quebec and I completely agree with you. My Exhibit A would be Lionel Groulx, who still has a Metro station and a street named after him. My Exhibit be Camilien Houde, who also has a street named after him. While the religious influence has greatly waned, it has left some quite toxic residues.
Interesting article. However, I am going to need to see/hear the evidence for this claim:
It would not be out of character for Trudeau to insist on sticking around because he wants to be the one to wear the coming defeat, if anyone must.
One of several recurring themes during Junior's tenure is his complete inability/unwillingness to take responsibility for ANYTHING. When caught red-handed you can place bets on how long it will take for him to proclaim that WE ALL must do better. I am looking forward to his concession speech to see if he can finally act with grace for once.
But, Gordo, why on earth are you looking forward to something that will never happen.
Lose? Absolutely.
Concession speech? Maybe, maybe not; perhaps a speech accusing electors of malfeasance or "not understanding."
Act with grace? Not gonna happen.
Stephen Harper consistently refused to accept responsibility for any of a litany of scandals that happened in his government - which made it all the more surprising when he gave such a gracious concession speech on the night of his 2015 defeat.
Trudeau actually apologized for his own behaviour more times in the first year of government than Harper ever did in a decade of governing. So I think his inability to apologize in recent years is why he lost a bunch of former Liberal voters.
No, Stevie, the Face Painter apologized for Canada's ALLEGED sins, not for any (in)action of he or his government.
Just as one very intriguing idea, he apologized - obsequiously - for residential schools but never once acknowledged his own family's personal involvement in those institutions. T1 was Prime Minister and so he, too, is subject to the condemnation that the Face Painter has allocated to non-native Canadians, whether they had personal involvement or none. So, when is he going to acknowledge his own family's dereliction? Answer, never.
There is nothing for Canada as a country to apologize over the residential schools anyway. What was the Canadian government supposed to do, ignore the requests by the chiefs to provide schools, as it promised to under the Numbered Treaties? Should Macdonald have said, "Sorry, we think you would be better off left to starve in your tipis while you try to preserve your traditional way of life unsullied by literacy and modernity. Some day those of you who survive will thank us for not making you learn to read and write English."? We weren't going to not fence off the land for grazing and agriculture. If you want flush toilets, flour, and firearms, you have to assimilate yourself to some extent into the society that makes those things, if only to earn the cash income it takes to buy them. Or was the idea that all those things and more should be provided to the natives for free by the settler society that invented them? (Which is pretty much what we ended up doing.)
There was some abuse of course, much of it by older students against younger ones, but the main beef against the res schools today is the cultural genocide angle. There is actually no such thing as cultural genocide anyway, but how can you leave someone in a stone-age culture when the modern world is everywhere around them? What would schooling have looked like if it *didn't* replace traditional hunter-gatherer-superstitious culture with reading, writing, and arithmetic (and manual and agricultural skills, which back then most settler kids had to know a lot about, too)?
People who criticize the idea of residential schools have to say what they would have done instead, knowing only what Macdonald knew back then. Got back into our boats and sailed back to England is not a useful suggestion.
You're conflating the initial setup of a residential school system from the 19th century with the 20th century kidnapping of Indigenous children, but it's the latter that tends to get the most criticism and attention in discussion of residential schools. While I don't support using the term "genocide" as many do to describe the latter, it was certainly a form of cultural extermination and a form of slavery that absolutely warranted government apologies and compensation (for which Harper rightly apologized in 2008).
That's just not true. Children were not kidnapped and they were not enslaved. Cultural extermination means whatever you want it to mean. How can you not assimilate a culture that wants the things that the dominant culture makes, but traditional pre-literate pre-scientific culture can't? Isn't all education of foreigners a form of assimilation? Don't we want immigrants to learn how to be Canadian? We certainly weren't going to regress to a stone-age culture just not to offend the indigenous people. Do you not think that your modern culture is "better" than the indigenous one? Would you have kept it for yourself and not shared it? Sharing it means you teach them to read and write English and learn arithmetic and manual skills relevant to a modern economy, and yes, dress and comport themselves to be like us. I'm not clear what it is you think we wiped out in our "cultural extermination" that should have been allowed to flourish.
You are using deliberately misleading and unnecessarily inflammatory language that misrepresents what the residential schools were about. Stephen Harper apologized for the sexual abuse that did occur at the schools, much of it student-on-student. We'll never know what really happened there -- you weren't there -- because school "survivors" were paid more if they said they were sexually abused than if they just had their knuckles rapped by a nun with a ruler. No one's testimonials were examined for truthfulness. But it became a convenient explanation for the terrible social-cultural conditions on Reserves and in urban downtowns that it was all Whitey's fault, even though only a minority of native children ever attended a residential school.
You haven't told me what you would have done to make the schools better in the 20th century. School attendance became compulsory for all students of all races as the concept of mandatory public education took hold in the provinces. Were you "kidnapped" or "enslaved" when you were sent off to school? Remember this is Canada. We do things on the cheap here. There was never enough tax money to provide free boarding school really well. Good enough for government work had to be good enough.
To very belatedly reply, here is some text from Harper's apology statement:
"The Government of Canada built an educational system in which very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes, often taken far from their communities. Many were inadequately fed, clothed and housed. All were deprived of the care and nurturing of their parents, grandparents and communities. First Nations, Inuit and Métis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools. Tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools and others never returned home."
https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1571589171655
No, that is false, as far as Trudeau's total record is concerned. He apologized for his own behaviour and for that of the Liberals in multiple instances early in his first years:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/liberals-acting-too-much-like-harper-trudeau-says-after-electoral-reform-concession-1.2928083
https://globalnews.ca/news/2683845/trudeau-sorry-for-blaming-opposition-parties-for-electoral-reform-delay/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-ethics-aga-khan-1.4458220
Trudeau has simply apologized more for personal or governing conduct than Harper ever did.
However, apologies for personal or governing behaviour have dried up since then. Whereas Harper embraced fully the image of the unapologetic alpha-male leader and pleased the Conservative base, Trudeau now tries to be both the unrepentant alpha-male and the soft feminist at the same, which satisfies almost no one.
Great article. The takeaway seems to be that a different man could have been a sunny ways Prime Minister in 2015 and then later in 2022 recognizing that the world had changed (or revealed itself) pivoted to a realistic view of the seriousness of the world.... but that Justin Trudeau isn't that man.
He still believes that his policies of 2015 are suited to the world of 2024.
Spot on. It is indeed plausible to argue that Mr Trudeau is locked in the past.
Michael Den Tandt's criticism of the Trudeau government's failure to rebuild our defence capabilities is also irrefutable in its logic. However, it would have been nice to hear--from a long-time friend of the Prime Minister and JT's former top advisor--why this government was utterly incapable of shifting gears on defence, despite all that has happened to us since late 2018?
There are two areas in which this government showed no interest or ability: the economy and defence. To extend the metaphor, "shifting gears" suggests that they were in a gear. They were not and are not. Despite all their fine words, this government was really stuck in neutral.
Boy it really is nostalgia all around. "Butts left the government in 2019"... Whether you kindly assume the readers know under the BIG cloud of SNC, thats quite the characterization. Nostalgia indeed. I agree, there is almost a given that after a certain time, there is a staleness to 3 term governments, but its much more than just he needs to re-invent himself. That might be possible if people see some credibility there, but he has kinda burned all that. I just cant bring myself to give him nor those around him any benefit of the doubt. So even if he really, really, really did become Justin 2.0, I dont think anyone would believe it at this point. Its too late.
He's always been the emperor without clothes. There is nothing to reinvent. Hence the nostalgia. It keeps the votes of the overly sentimental folks who still support him.
And no one in the caucus has the balls to tell him. Where is that child?
"not by going to war with Russia, but by much more actively preparing Canada for the new and more perilous world in which we now live". If Trump wins the election it's not impossible that he pulls the USA out of NATO. That could easily embolden Putin to attack a NATO ally and we will find ourselves actually at war with Russia. I understand that spending money on the military in peacetime seems unnecessary but.....
Article 5 doesn’t make anyone automatically at war with an attacker. All we pledge is that we will regard an attack on one as an attack on us all. That gives all the NATO signatories the *right* (as a causus belli) to declare war on the attacker. It doesn’t obligate us to. Each signatory is free to decide what response is “necessary.” It would certainly be no more than what each country would do if it was attacked itself. In Canada’s case, that response would be thoughts and a land acknowledgment (since we don’t do prayers anymore), an admonition in the strongest possible terms for all parties to respect DEI and affirm that transwomen are women and can’t be drafted......and that’s about it. Oh, and a ritual condemnation of Israel as a settler colonial state, to reduce the chance of opportunistic revolutionary unrest here at home. Perhaps some lockdowns and a tax increase. Never let a crisis go to waste.
If the US withdraws from NATO, the alliance is finished. Britain and France would have the nuclear capacity to tear off an arm (deGaulle’s famous phrase) and Poland and the Baltics would be feisty and plucky because they’ve actually lived under Russian dominion. But the other countries would simply not fight if the US doesn’t step up.
I'm not sure Colbert is that smart. He has had good vehicles and mentors but now he attracts nothing but an echo chamber of "progressives" who will laugh at any shots, however lame, about anyone perceived to be centrist or right. None of his schtick is smart anymore. He should be grateful Trump is running again so he has an easy target.
I think you are totally wrong that Trudeau is "sticking around because he is the one who wants to wear the defeat". This is the man who threw your friend Butts under the bus (too bad McGuinty did do that before he screwed up Ontario's electricity), dumped two women who were ethical and both smarter than he, who never owns up to his own mistakes but graciously gives us non-elites learning experiences. And to use Trump and Covid as excuses for 10 years of mismanagement is myopic at best.
👍Well said! Trump, COVID, and don’t forget Harper, Harper, Harper … whose name is still frequently invoked by Liberal MPs.
Canada is better off without one of those women in the government, except that maybe we were safer with her inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. What is she up to these days, anyway?
Trudeau is going to stay on despite the polls, despite the fact he is actively disliked by the majority of Canadians. He reminds me of the guy who vehemently denied he had leprosy, despite the fact his nose and one ear had fallen off. It is nothing more than a vanity farewell. I would suggest to Justin, do not let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, that is if his ass has not yet fallen off.
"'tis but a scratch. I am Invincible!" Monty Python.
Newsflash to Michael Den Tandt: You are one of the many people who should by now know extremely well that Justin Trudeau's genetics and character are not capable of him doing anything useful.
Making defence a priority would not make the Libs any more competent in achieving that priority. Not everything they want to do is bad, but everything they do, they do badly. That's the real problem.
As has been mentioned in The Line many times, the Trudeau government seems to think that making an announcement is enough. When they manage to actually deliver on an announcement, they almost always mess it up. It's quite remarkable, isn't it?
After nine years the "mess up" is not remarkable, it is now the expected.
Let’s fervently hope and pray they mess up the passage and implementation of the On-line Harms Bill.
Quite right. I’m amazed the bugger can tie his shoes.
Michael, well said. The question is, how much worse does the international geopolitical situation have to get before this (or any future) government does something to show they take defence and security seriously. Many have commented on PMJTs responses to Colbert, but the one they have missed was his casual affirmation that he has "concerns" about the security on Canada's Arctic. With this attitude In a few years Russia and China will be playing "Kick the Can" in our back yard. Please have a read of the Naval Ass'n's paper "In Extremis" wherein we provide our perspectives. https://www.navalassoc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/In-Extremis-MR.pdf
> With this attitude In a few years Russia and China will be playing "Kick the Can" in our back yard.
They will not. For one, China just doesn't have that kind of navy. They'd like to have it, but their brand new submarine SANK while docked in the spring and they managed to cover it up until recently.
As far as Russia doing it, keep in mind that the US military sees our back yard as strategically important to them, meaning that if Canada isn't defending it, it to all purposes becomes American.
Canada *can* surrender our sovereignty by neglect ... if we do, we don't get to choose who we surrender it to, the Americans will decide that.
The below is instructive
The first 6 of the top ten icebreakers in the world are Russian. The Chinese also have “ research” icebreakers. I would be concerned.
https://www.marineinsight.com/types-of-ships/top-5-biggest-ice-breaker-ships-in-the-world-in-2011/#:~:text=Arktika%20is%20one%20of%20the,icebreaker%20ship%20in%20the%20world.&text=Arktika%20is%20173.3%20m%20long,the%20ice%20below%20the%20ship.
I'll wait for a military expert to correct me, but I'm really not particularly worried about icebreakers ... because that's a surface vessel and surface vessels are far easier to detect. Silent and undetectable submarines... well that's an obvious concern.
What concerns me about us abandoning the defence of our country isn't that we'll suffer strategic losses to China or Russia, it's that we'll suffer a loss of sovereignty and decision making to the Americans and at the end of the day, our interests are not perfectly aligned.
Oh, that and the economic consequences that the US government might impose as the price of our protection.
Large surface combatants, and I don’t mean icebreakers, would not be committed to the constricted treacherous waters of the Northwest Passage. There is no reason for submarines to get trapped in those waters, either. A sub’s mission is interdiction of sea commerce and attacking enemy military facilities using long-range missiles. There isn’t any of either in the High Arctic. CFB Cold Lake isn’t even in the “low arctic” Northwest Territories. It’s in Alberta. It’s more of a sovereignty issue. We can’t parry a challenge to our claimed sovereignty over it. Once the passage is ice-free, it will be an international waterway. That’s obvious. What’s up in the air is whether any of the high arctic land is worth fighting over. Whoever claims it will just inherit an eye-wateringly large welfare obligation and a raft of social problems..
If anyone successfully claims Canada's Arctic for their own they will most certainly not care about any welfare obligations or environmental concerns. The Indigenous population would be driven out. Slave labour from the lower classes of China, Russia, or even the United States would be imported to harvest the vast and enormous mineral and energy riches existing there.
Andrew, you make some good points. I read about that NUC boat which sank alongside. My concerns are about resources. I'm thinking that with the protection of their naval forces the Chinese and the Russians will go after our fish and minerals like they are doing in the western Pacific because there is no one there to stop them. I expect you have read, the Russian and Chinese navies are now operating in the North Pacific/Bering Sea. I have often wondered why we are not already States 51 - 64 and when that will happen.
Nostalgia has always been the name of the game for Trudeau. He's always wanted us to think of his father, whether it be intentional (focus on sex/gender issues, "just watch me," multiculturalism, love of China, arrogance towards to the west and just plain arrogance overall) to coincidences such as his family situation (number of kids, getting divorced while PM, etc). I absolutely expect him to make a comeback in a few years, just like dad did. I feel like he's not really his own person and never has been.
don't forget the Emergency Act/Emergency Measures act.
I knew I was missing something!
Justin Trudeau seems to actually be more like Harper than his own father in the strict sense of leading an incremental government. Pierre Trudeau certainly led an ambitious government, including or especially in his later years when he patriated the Constitution. Justin by contrast shied away from one of his bigger campaign promises (i.e. electoral reform) and he now seems to be devoid of any big ideas whatsoever.
Justin Trudeau is full of big ideas.
Announcing and proclaiming those big ideas, anyway.
Terrible at implementing them.
They're not just failing to regroup on how to deliver on failed promises, but doubling down on solving last decade's problems. A lot less appetite for income-based redistribution (and similar progressive promises) in a world where renters scraping by on what were once good incomes see themselves paying for dental care for millionaire seniors, and Canada has found out it's not immune to immigration undermining support for safety nets. The bigger driver of inequality is now housing wealth (or put the other way high home prices), and the Liberals pretty explicitly want to keep the inequality while possibly taking the edges off of hardship for renters.
Immigration undermines support for safety nets everywhere. It’s actually one of the best reasons to have immigration: no country with mass immigration wants to expand its social welfare spending because immigrants rub your noses in the folly of welfare spending. The only catch is that for the effect to be really strong, the immigrants have to heavy claimants of the welfare benefits. So there is good and bad.
"It would not be out of character for Trudeau to insist on sticking around because he wants to be the one to wear the coming defeat, if anyone must."
lol the honorable man who has never answered a direct question; obfuscation and misdirection defines who he is. He’s never admitted a mistake.
"It would not be out of character for Trudeau to insist on sticking around because he wants to be the one to wear the coming defeat, if anyone must."
(?) Surely you must be talking about some other public figure, not the king of evasion who never accepts responsibility for anything.
Even leaving this curious judgment aside, it's hard to take seriously a proposed solution to 'nostalgia,' and its failure to embrace 'major change and renewal,' that amounts to a lobbying pitch for the arms industry. Aren't Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman's share prices high enough for you already? What on Earth does this 'analysis' have to do with Canadian voters' legitimate grievances against the performance of the Trudeau government?
P.S. In the 1930s, Hitler solved Germany's unemployment problem by starting an immense rearmament program. There's nostalgia for you.
The fact is that the current world is very different from the one that followed the collapse of the USSR. Canada jumped on the "peace dividend" in a big way then. New threats to the democratic West have arisen and we cannot continue to pretend that they don't exist.
Before launching expensive new social programs, we need to look after the basics. One of those is the ability to defend ourselves and to contribute in a meaningful way to the collective defense of the West. We can do neither at the moment.
This is not purely the fault of the Trudeau government. Several governments before his have cut military expenditures. But the new threats have transpired during the tenure of his government and nothing has been done. This is a legitimate grievance against the performance of his government.
I have no quarrel with the claim that our military badly needs upgrading. My quarrel is with the role a former Liberal speechwriter (and unsuccessful Liberal candidate) chooses to have this self-evident fact play in his 'analysis' of why the federal Liberal leader is ignoring polls, and by inference the wishes of the Canadians whose interests said leader routinely claims he represents, and which are supposedly his sole motivation.
At bottom this article is more concerned about the fate of the Liberal Party than about the fate of the country. If the author honestly believes those disparate fates are inextricably bound together it wouldn't be too surprising: it's a common conceit among Liberals and is certainly shared by the Liberal leader. If polls are to be believed it isn't shared by voters, though; and perhaps that's why the understanding of the country's needs that informs this article coheres so poorly with the understanding that polls are reporting (thumbs up to military upgrades; thumbs down to the Liberals, and to the current Liberal leader in particular).
Canada spent its “peace dividend” long before the Cold War ended. How do you think we built up Medicare through the 70s and 80s and vastly expanded the welfare state?
With respect to the notion that Trudeau will stick around to "wear" the impending defeat, it does smack of the honourable. It is also smart politics. The Liberals will almost certainly be defeated in the next election. Why ask a new leader to carry that? It makes more sense to have Trudeau suffer the defeat. Not only is it almost entirely his doing, given his control over the party, but it will allow the Liberal Party of Canada to sweep the decks and bring in a completely new team. That team will then have several years in opposition to prepare for the time when the then governing party begins to wear thin.
As for defence spending, it has been apparent for several years that Canada needs to up its game in all areas: funding, procurement, recruitment, and strategy and planning. Though we know nothing about Poilievre's plans if and when he becomes PM, we can only hope that defence is at the top of the list.
I think Poilievre has admitted that the Tories can’t do much about defence spending either. There just isn’t a constituency in Canada that sees it as important enough to give up spending in other areas. (Edit: see Mark Kennedy below for an example.) War toys are *so-o-oo* expensive! Especially when all the ships have to be made in Quebec and the Maritimes and the vehicles in Ontario. Russia and China can’t be that bad, surely! And not enough Canadians want to be soldiers for us to spend 2% of GDP on them. Would you want to serve and possibly die for a country that teaches its schoolkids they live in an illegitimate racist colonialist settler state? Tampons in the men’s latrines turns off 10 times as many young guys as it might attract. The kind of men interested in soldiering know they have no future in a military with values like that.
Poilievre will axe the tax and, since he's made it clear that all our problems are caused by JT, there will be nothing left to fix. Who needs any policy beyond that?
I believe Pollievre HAS to have a deeper policy playbook, he just knows what is short, catchy, and easily repeatable so has been smart about how he's marketed himself. What I am eager to see, is how he brings people along for the journey who have been caught by the marketing side but don't really understand the policy side. (I look forward to the policy pdf from the conservatives!)
Poilievre has stated in the past that he does not want to reveal the Conservatives' policy proposals for fear of the Liberals "stealing" them and getting all the credit. It really is incomprehensible that they wouldn't have all sorts of people working on policies.
See BC politics for a perfect example of a poll-losing incumbent stealing from the other party’s policy manual to shore up public opinion. Sadly, it’s working.
Poilievre has been very noncommittal and lukewarm at best about meeting our NATO commitments. He seems more focused on lower taxes, reduce spending and waging culture war than facing the new geopolitical reality.