On why Carney can "go to China." On Trudeau hate, post-Trudeau. On the passing of a great Canadian. And the most hilarious/scary celeb breakup in a while.
People don't hate Trudeau for irrational reasons, or at least many don't.
Trudeau ran a decade-long active and deliberate campaign of destruction on the Canada we grew up in and were proud of before he came to power. He earned every speck of animosity that many people have for him, including myself who actually voted for him in 2015 (yay legal weed and less so electoral reform!).
He spent fantastic amounts of money on redistribution and nonsense, while productivity went backwards and standard of living fell. He made our justice system a joke and let crime spiral out of control. He denigrated Canadian symbols, traditions, and identity, especially anything connected with British English Canada. He displayed particular contempt for any white men who weren't completely on board with self-flagellation, while going so far as to embrace insane conspiracy theories like the Kamloops mass grave mirage to boost the victim profile of every other group. He busted open the floodgates to effectively indiscriminate mass immigration, without really any public debate or even much announcement, drastically changing the demographics of our cities and overwhelming our infrastructure. He oversaw the biggest increase in house prices in our country's history, pricing entire generations out of the housing market and acted like this was no big deal at all. He corrupted our media with his payoffs and subsidies. He politicized the public service and judiciary with deeply ideological appointments. He played cynical procedural games in Parliament and avoided accountability for a huge number of scandals. He embraced insanity like UNDRIP and made infrastructure impossible to build. He ran the 2021 election in a shockingly slimy way by calling it while Covid was still active, then demonizing the unvaccinated and gun owners in order to avoid accountability for government waste and overreach. And I'm missing a bunch of examples. He spent his entire term wasting resources, missing opportunities, dividing every available group against another, all while carrying on the most smug, self-satisfied attitude. Matt and Jen did a spectacular job of documenting the many failures of the Trudeau regime, much of it in real time. They shouldn't be so fast to forget these.
And yes, it was especially galling that he kept getting away with it. Finally it was looking like Canadians had figured it out, and were able to focus and see through the bullshit long enough to install a new government that would undo some of the damage, uncover some of the corruption that was permanently stalled in committee, reverse some of the trends, and restore hope to those who had felt targeted and toremented for an entire decade.
But in the end, Trudeau really did get away with it, and the absurdly cynical installation of Mark Carney was just the latest example of how Trudeau and his enablers avoided comeuppance. That Carney avoided addressing any of the 10-year record of the party he was hand-picked to take over, and rather ran his election on a fictional boogeyman campaign against his new friend Donald Trump, abetted by the Globe and Mail, just adds butter cream frosting and a cherry on top.
So I can understand how this anger has transferred directly to Mark Carney. The bad guys weren't brought to justice or even chastised for their behaviour, the reset didn't happen, and while the pace of devastation might slow for a little while (if that), I don't see the trajectory changing.
And don't say "oh only a Liberal could (promise to) make this or that minor change". If Poilievre won a 230 seat majority last fall on a "fuck the media we don't care what they say" campaign, his party sure wouldn't be constrained by what criticisms pundits would have. Especially as half of the legacy media would be packing their shit right now and cleaning out their desks for the unemployment line with the end of subsidies and CBC funding.
What is clear to me from your second sentence is that you are one of the many who hate Justin Trudeau for irrational reasons. What Trudeau made very clear in both his run up to and time as PM is that he truly believes that everything he did and wanted to do would ultimately be for the benefit of Canada and Canadians. That your starting premise is that he “deliberately” planned to destroy Canada is therefore illogical. Furthermore, in any form of democracy, including a representative democracy like our own, it is illogical to assume that a single person’s view of the country, its history, culture, laws, etc., is absolutely accurate.
There are many reasons to believe Justin Trudeau did and would continue to harm the country. You however have not presented them rationally. Just because you may not like a certain political path, or action, does not make it wrong. The vast majority of the world functions in shades of gray, vice stark black and white.
To Justin Trudeau "deliberate destruction" of pre-2015 Canada probably felt more like "I'm gonna make transformative change!".
But I will clarify in one respect: some of the destructive results were brought about by negligence and incompetence while trying to make changes, and others were as a result of the changes going 'as planned'. But the decisions to make those changes, in many cases to fix things that weren't broken, were deliberate.
My point is that he didn't just have a run of bad luck or bad circumstances. He made choices and the results of those choices messed up the country.
I’m a semantics guy, so words matter and mean what they have been defined to mean. Now your points are rational.
To be clear, to deliberately destruct and to deliberately make decisions do not mean anywhere near the same thing. Also to be clear, while I agree with you that virtually all policies Justin Trudeau implemented or tried to implement were harmful to the country and our “national fabric,” there are other political perspectives that can and have been reasonably and rationally argued. Just because you and I disagree with those other perspectives does not mean we are right.
Vile belittlement of those we disagree with only looks bad on us, and those who would agree with our belittling. Yes, the same applies to the other side of the argument.
For someone who self-identified as voting Liberal in 2015, I find your account of your change in mind to be opaque and quite dubious. You literally pivoted in your post from a superficial duo of preferred policies as a half-sentence justification for voting Liberal, to then listing out a torrent of post-2015 Conservative talking points and accusations. I am left with absolutely no idea of what the heck you were surprised by. When exactly was the first time that Trudeau ever did something that you were actually *surprised* by? Just who did you actually think he was in the 2015 election?
I thought Trudeau was another ordinary cynical politician the night he announced his leadership bid in 2012, and very little surprised me with him in his time in power, beyond the galling lie on electoral reform and the harassment of Jody Wilson-Raybould.
He did not actually "get away" with much of anything. He never recovered his peak popularity nor another majority after his first term, he served as Prime Minister for a time duration of a typical Prime Minister, his voting support fell below 2015 Harper levels after a similar amount of time in power, and he faced the ignominy of being forced out of power by his own party. He's now quietly faded away from political life like every past Prime Minister with no current political power, whatsoever (whereas Stephen Harper had a post-PM role as Chair of the Conservative Party Fund).
As to voting Liberal in 2015, I was younger and more naive, and I was annoyed at Harper for - ironically - letting the housing market climb too fast (including stuff like 40 year mortgages and too low too long interest rates) and increasing immigration too much. I was actually starting to warm up to the CPC toward the end of their term but always felt it was very stupid to keep marijuana illegal, and important to get electoral reform passed (in my imagination this was sure to be MMP), so yah those were the issues I voted on.
Trudeau's policies beyond the headline ones were either vague or poorly publicized and I figured I was otherwise voting for Paul Martin in colourful socks. Liberals cared about the little guy so they would return to sensible policies on population intake and housing, and not change much else of what was working, right? At the end of the the crazy-polling 2015 election I also figured the Liberals would get a minority so if things went sideways we could always bring Harper (or his replacement) back pretty easily.
Well 10 years later we got a population perpetually micro-dosed on gummies, "hold my beer" on every policy I disliked about Harper, elections that can go between one party's majority and another's with a 1.5% swing, and disastrous handling of every file that was working just fine before, just for the hell of it.
Trudeau got away with lots. He got re-elected twice when he shouldn't have, and got to govern for the last four years like he had a majority that he absolutely did not earn or deserve, making some of his most significant changes along the way.
You have identified the issues that you voted on, but that still does not clarify what your initial impressions of Trudeau were. You thought you were voting for "Paul Martin in colourful socks" - why? What specifically reminded you of Paul Martin?
What were the most "significant changes" in policy from 2019 to 2024 that the NDP did not readily support? You can debate the merits of the NDP's choices in this time period, but you cannot blame one man for specific policy changes, let alone actual governance or societal outcomes, and at the same time gloss over the two-party support for said policies. Either Trudeau's governance agenda fundamentally had appeal among the support base of two different political parties, or it did not. You cannot give a rational assessment of a politician's legacy without an objective accounting of where they ignored or defied pushback and where they actually received broad-based encouragement.
I'm not quite sure what you are asking here. I guess I failed to conduct sufficient psycho-political analysis on the leader in question before seeing him in action. I think the rest of his record speaks for itself. And thanks to centralization of power in the PMO (another Liberal 'hold my beer' to a bad trend started by Harper) it really IS Trudeau's record. He was personally the one in the driver's seat to an extent that I also didn't anticipate.
As to the NDP, as soon as their metric for success became "keeping the Conservatives out of power", there were no Liberal policies they wouldn't go along with. Jagmeet Singh may or may not have been an explicit Liberal operative, but it doesn't matter because his actions would have been no different if he was.
You have seemingly hinted that you did not rationally scrutinize Trudeau in 2015, but that you have since derived a more rational analysis of the man. I would respectfully submit that you have simply *never* scrutinized the man in an objective manner; if you did, you would be able to explain in deeper detail *what surprised you* about the man. What made you believe that the man would behave differently in power than he ended up doing?
*What specifically* in Trudeau's character reminded you of Paul Martin? Whatever your impressions of the man were in 2015, your impressions came from somewhere, something, or someone, and I have no idea what that something or who that someone is. You say your impressions were mistaken, I only ask *where* they came from?
"there were no Liberal policies they wouldn't go along with."
This is factually incorrect. The Harper majority parliament of 2011-2015 tabled 100+ motions of time allocation, and the Trudeau majority parliament of 2015-2019 tabled a high but lesser number of time allocation motions, with the effect of cutting off opposition scrutiny. I am not aware of anyone claiming that many time allocation motions were submitted during the 2019-2024 minority years. In fact, the opposite happened, with the Liberals being unmotivated to the point of advancing legislation at a snail's pace, like with the bad Online Harms Bill that sat in parliament for a full year before dying with the election call. As far as I am aware, the NDP joined the Conservatives in protesting the government' fall 2024 refusal to abide by a motion to disclose certain documents. They certainly were not begging the government to rush through more legislation, at the very least.
That all aside, to whatever extent Jagmeet Singh was submissive to the Liberal government, you have not attempted to explain *why* the NDP was desperate to keep Conservatives out of power. Coalition-building is a two-way street, and if Pierre Poilievre was publicly insulting you and accusing you of being motivated purely by a pension policy, why would you want to work with him rather than a PM who does not publicly insult you?
So you are saying that by falling for Liberal bullshit once, when I was younger and much less politically engaged, I am permanently disqualified from pointing out any of the negative policies and outcomes that came from that government, all of which I should have anticipated? If that's the standard I think we are all fucked.
What surprised me about Trudeau is that he didn't continue the centrist Liberal government of the 90's and early 2000's, acting as charming figurehead while advisors did the real work. Instead he embraced the worst stereotypes (about both him and his party) warned about by what seemed like hysterical right-wingers at the time. I was also surprised that Canadians put up with his nonsense and didn't kick Trudeau to the curb at the earliest opportunity.
The NDP made token resistance to the Liberals but if they weren't willing to bring down the government over illegal withholding of documents relating to a major scandal, they were de facto complicit.
I'm not really sure what your position or goal is here. Are you defending Trudeau's record? Do things seem good to you now compared to 2015?
Every Prime Minister makes mistakes, and few Prime Ministers have their careers ended by only a single mistake. Whether or not any particular Prime Minister made worse mistakes than most other Prime Ministers is very much a partisan and politically fraught question.
I have not seen a person accuse Trudeau of being the worst Prime Minister who has also shown the civic awareness to acknowledge any of the most major scandals that occurred under any Conservative Prime Ministers.
> and few Prime Ministers have their careers ended by only a single mistake
I think "single mistake" is incorrect.
Blackface
"thank you for your donation"
SNC Lavelin
"This will be the last FPTP election"
that took me only the time it took to type to think about it without bothering to capitalize properly and I'm only picking ones where EVERYONE agrees he was wrong and/or lying.
I did not mean that Trudeau was only guilty of a single mistake - I mean that mistakes tend to be accumulated over time, and it is almost never a single mistake but rather a series of mistakes that bring down a Prime Minister.
The line at which a series of mistakes become a fatal blow is always going to be context-dependent and determined by competing factors such as the perceived upsides of the incumbent Prime Minister. A Prime Minister's mistakes will be more likely to be consequential when the opposition is higher quality and more competitive. For those reasons, a Prime Minister is not necessarily spoiled from lack of accountability simply by continuing to hold office after a series of poor judgment calls. Democracy is the kind of system where you thrive simply by being better than the alternatives, and the alternatives also pay an electoral price for their own mistakes as well.
Well that's the thing. I think the "context" was simply that LPC voters were okay with basically anything as long as it was Justin Trudeau who did the bad thing in which case it wasn't bad and anyone saying that it is bad is probably an awful bigot and a bad person.
Going back to the original point from @krm1215727... yeah... Justin Trudeau really did get away with all of his scandals and with being a generally really bad at the actual job Prime Minister.
Why? Well people have their own theories, but my personal theory is that a lot of voters just really liked voting for the nepo-baby. It's really that simple. Canadian voters just like the celebrity culture nepo-baby Prime Minister who has the right feels.
Justin Trudeau really kind of sucked at delivering on the job, but ... well a lot of people liked the feeling and the vibes of Trudeau so he got a pass on all his crap in a way that no one does... because he had the last name. (Can you imagine how badly Stephanne Dion would have been destroyed if he'd become Prime Minister and had only half of Trudeau's failures)... Yeouch.
Ultimately it all comes back to voters. Democracy is great, but there is no magical law of nature that stops voters, caucuses and parties from making dumb decisions... such as the LPC caucus voting once again to give their leader the power to ignore all their complaints no matter how bad he may end up being at the job in a year or two. (Honestly, when a caucus votes against the reform act provisions they're really confessing what they really think about their own competence as MPs and how much they'd prefer a big daddy in charge to tell them what to do.)
Exactly, all the whiney bitching about the Trudeau years is the democracy we live in. The fact that the Conservatives couldn’t muster up a decisive win through yet another election cycle is like saying the Edmonton Oilers should have won last night.
Harper destroyed the notion of a conservative majority, or continuing with the hockey logic, putting Gretzky in the house doesn’t work any more. PP isn’t the McJesus of the Conservative movement, it’s time for a trade.Duh.
First question should be to all whiners what are you doing about it. Campaigning, running for office, sacrificing your cozy comfy life for the sake of country and democracy? Second, perhaps a move to the US is best advised where whiny bitching means violence and intimidation, the crumbling empire can use the foot soldiers.
The reason for the fuck Trudeau/Carney anger is the stupid destructive shit they have or want to do: climate alarmism. Genderwang tranny shit. Mass graves genocide hoax. Mass immigration. Public service bloat. Housing. Censorship. CBC & media subsidies. Central Digital Currency. Youth unemployment. Safe supply. Catch and release b/c of a judiciary out of touch with the average Joe. All the bullshit apologies. All the scandals. And people looked past all that and voted them in anyways. It’s all fucking gross. It’s not just fuck Trudeau/Carney, it’s fuck everyone who voted for this gross gross shit
Snort. I won't delete this or ban, since everyone needs to blow off some steam, but for everyone else paying attention, if this had been directed at someone else, this would have been a comment ban.
I keep the comments as civil as possible, Roddy, because that's good for business, and The Line is a business. Don't make a habit of this.
Exactly. The fuckety fuck fuck reports from the heartlands of consumer greed set the bar. Without the fk Trudeau/Carney mission The Line flounders. This is what you get with self serving opinions, irreverence, instead of unbiased reporting. Suck it up.
10 likes to this comment, for the wording, esp. the first sentence. And for the concise, properly widely encompassing contents. Carney will drive Canada into the hole that he helped Trudeau to dig. For Carney, Canada is nothing but a plaything to experiment on at the end of his working life, that is evident from examining the public information available regarding him. I wish him a short and a very harsh ride.
"Canada is nothing but a plaything to experiment on at the end of his working life"
Ummm, how is that not more or less equally true of every Canadian Prime Minister? Every Canadian Prime Minister had their career peak in their time as Prime Minister and never achieved anything more consequential after that. Every Canadian Prime Minister "experiments" with what they believe is their superior knowledge on what would benefit the country.
You know, there's smarter criticisms available to make of Carney than the garbage that the Canadian conservative movement keeps regurgitating. Like the Trojan Horse Bill C-2 that Conservatives currently seem incapable of questioning even the slightest.
Just finished listening your segment on "fuck Carney" sentiment, and I think Matt's theory of "anger based on Trudeau keep getting away with things" is quite on point. Also personally, I wished that Trudeau hadn't resigned so that we have a historical record of Canadian voters, by massive landslide, rejected Trudeau. Not just some opinion polls that existed in archived Wikipedia or 338 page, but in documented historical record of the country.
The fact that didn't happen because Carney managed to salvage Liberal party disappointed me, and I can see people who shares the same feeling as me (but more intense) will channel that frustration onto Carney. This is the pattern of Canadian electoral history, with Turner, Campbell, or Eves in ON were rejected by voters in large part as rejection of their predecessors.
If in 40-50 years or so people read the legacy of Trudeau and saw "he never lost an election" as part of it, they'd think that Trudeau was some great PM that defined Canadian identity in a way he wanted it to be, and no record shown to disagree with that piece.
I doubt it. Decades later we know Trudeau Sr and Mulroney were unpopular. The fact that they weren't shown the door by the electorate doesn't change that. JT was far from the first leader or the last who will leave rather than face certain defeat. History will record that.
We don't really know that though. Mulroney was considered this elder statesman who wisely brought in free trade, and Trudeau Sr. is practically venerated as a saint in eastern Canada for "giving" us the highly dubious gifts of the Charter and multiculturalism.
Mulroney wasn't looked at that way in 1993 and neither was Trudeau in 1984. Give it 30 years and even JT may be looked at favourably. That won't change the record on how he was looked at when he left office.
Mulroney still isn't viewed as an "elder statesman".
Brian Mulroney is the guy who was secretly meeting with an arms dealer to accept large amounts of cash in brown manilla envelopes for "consulting fees". (Pro-tip... when you're doing that, that's when you know you've become the villain of the story.)
Say what you will about Justin Trudeau... he didn't do that.
I think that glaring example of corruption these days tends to be perceived as an exception rather than the rule of how Brian Mulroney behaved himself as Prime Minister. But yeah, that scandal will rightfully never be forgotten in our lifetimes.
There's something about "get paid cash in secret meetings with arms dealers" that goes a fair bit beyond the norm for Canadian political scandals. Far enough beyond that it redefines everything. I mean... can you think of anything close to that from any other Prime Minister?
At some point... misdeeds get close to "he was a great priest and really tended the congregation well... if we leave aside that part at the end where he absconded to a non-extradition country with a pile of money stolen from the orphans and widows fund, he did great things for the community".
Did we? As a millenial new Canadian, this is the first I've heard of it. Before this I only know that he's the best PM Canada ever had, and the airport.
Well, those who study the history would. He won two minorities in elections with near identical results. Similar to Trudeau in 2019 and 21. He saw the writing on the wall and started planning his exit. Trudeau did not.
This is a very normal Canadian political move. Jump ship right before you get decimated. It's not a particularly novel thing, and even the liberals winning another election isn't that unprecedented. What remains to be seen is if Carney can do what many have previously struggled with and actually separate from his predecessor. He's certainly trying, at least.
As someone who has hated the Liberal Party for as long as I ever been aware of its existence, I am willing to give Carney the beneifit of the doubt, for now. That being said, I can see how some would hate Carney for being parachuted in to the leadership and not having any accountability for the previous 10 years.
The hatred doesn’t really surprise me, having seen the ingrained resentment of Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals well into the ‘90s in Alberta. I think there’s an appetite to see these unpopular leaders face a comeuppance, preferably in the form of a brutal electoral defeat. Trudeau Sr skipped out on his own terms, and the electoral beat-down fell on John Turner instead. Justin Trudeau did likewise, but the Liberals didn’t even experience the electoral drubbing that Trudeau detractors craved.
I am happy to say that prior to seeing Junior at the Throne Speech I had not thought of him at all since at least February. (I noted the consternation about the footwear he wore at that event but as the joke goes, I don’t have any less respect for him now, than I did before he made that sartorial choice.) Despite my concerns about how Carney actually will govern, his arrival has been such a breath of fresh air from a gravitas/seriousness/communication style perspective that he has largely scrubbed Junior from my memory. Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.
But yeah, regarding those concerns about how Carney will govern. (And also yeah, about that axiom, “we are recording early so something is gonna’ happen that we would want to address”.) Apparently, late this afternoon Carney responded to a question by declaring that if a Province doesn’t want a pipeline running through its territory, then no pipeline shall traverse that Province. Sorry, but this is genuinely disqualifying for a PM. Now, maybe he will walk this back after a night of sober thought and consultations with some Constitutional experts. And we should always judge PM’s by their actual actions and not their (potentially) off-the-cuff words. But this is a VERY bad sign. Because I am willing to give Carney a shot, I was shaking my head at Jen’s neighbour instantaneously replacing the Fuck Trudeau flag with a Fuck Carney flag. But if Carney sticks to this position, I could see me coming to share that sentiment.
I find it strange that Alberta doesn't want any other province to veto a pipeline, but believes it has a right to blackmail the country into something it wants. The "pipeline or we secede" seems to me to be the other side of the same coin as 'no one wants a pipeline here".
Pipelines have significant and immediate benefits: they bring investment, jobs, and wealth. That’s why Alberta and Saskatchewan want them. Opposition to pipelines on trumped-up environmental concerns is petty and gross. It’s jealousy, and that just gross. So much of Canada just grosses me out.
The benefits of pipelines are massive. The costs are small. A country that wasn’t governed by cynics would get them built
I mean there's the classic response here of "we did actually build pipelines under Trudeau", but my point is why does what Alberta and Saskatchewan want matter more than what Manitoba or Ontario wants? To flip it, Alberta doesn't like green energy incentives, but other provinces do. So does that mean we should ignore Alberta? We live in a confederation with a weak federal government, that means provinces are going to have a say
Alberta/Sask does nothing to block the ability of another province to grow their economy or trade.
Alberta leads the Nation in green energy investment and projects and it’s not even close. It’s the Wild West of windmills and solar panels out here. This is why Premier Smith put a 6 month pause (now expired) on permit issuance while regulation caught up. Hasn’t slowed down as a consequence.
What are Canadians supposed to think about a Carney supposition that:
-Alberta wants another pipeline to BC tidewater.
-This BC pipeline could make the “approved list” of projects deemed to be in the national interest.
-Any Province that is facing a “national interest” pipeline traveling through it can say no, thanks.
Pipelines that cross Provincial boundaries fall under federal jurisdiction, but Carney’s waffling suggests that he will not spend one cent of his political capital to override Provincial objections and approve a pipeline anyway. (Certainly not a pipeline through Quebec, with a Quebec election looming).
Pipeline approvals are exclusive federal jurisdiction. The primary role of the federal government is maintaining unrestricted and unbiased movement of people, goods, services and capital within national borders. A federal government that fails on that fundamental requirement lacks the authority to govern.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness in mitigating the risks of audience capture. On that broader topic of malaise/polarization/anger, I think even talking about it openly and with compassion is a good start! Just how you speak directly to people's behaviour, you speak to those emotions too. Maybe if institutions and leaders had been better at doing that during the woke era, that pressure would have been released? Anyway, thanks for the podcast! Also, loved the Marc Garneau article!
I got the opportunity to meet Marc Garneau years ago when I gave him a tour of our company’s test lab and manufacturing facilities. Like Matt says, he was a thoughtful and serious guy. I asked him how he found the transition from engineering to politics, also got to chat a bit about scuba diving on the coast and the former Navy ships sunk as artificial reefs. I feel it’s a real loss that he left politics, and that Trudeau didn’t properly use an incredibly capable person who could’ve made greater contributions to the success of the Liberal government.
I’m laughing my ass off at Rowdy Roddy’s comment above. I mean he’s not wrong? That said - I haven’t carried it forward to Carney. I still hate Trudeau, and some of his merry band of idiots that are still hanging around, but I’m into giving the new guy a chance based on what he ran on. And on that note..
I think Carney is doing a good job at the moment. Not perfect! The seeming allowance of giving one province a “veto” over a “national project” is a joke. It’s an abdication of responsibility, and it just opens the door to a party like the Bloc being able to throw a stick into the wheels of confederation and drive further division. BUT, I do think he’s getting progress on Conservative priorities that Conservatives would have a very hard time doing themselves. And I like this. I also appreciate the tone and tenor of leadership he’s bringing forward. Juxtaposed with the circus going on down South, it looks even better.
As to Trudeau getting what’s coming to him… I understand, but justice rarely looks like what you think it should. Let’s look at the facts for a moment.
1. He lost his marriage
2. He was humiliated by DJT on his way out the door
3. He was humiliated by most of his cabinet quitting, being forced to step down, and then by the turnaround Carney was able to achieve once he was gone.
4. His last 4 years in power he could go nowhere in the country without insane levels of vitriol being thrown at him. Including a family ski trip to Nelson BC.
5. His signature legislation got tossed by his own party.
6. He is respected by no one anywhere. He is held by most of his own Country (and the world). As a fool.
Trudeau got what he deserved, he will go down as the worst Prime Minister of all time, and live long enough to understand that. For a man driven by vanity- that’s going to sting.
I was in high school when Marc Garneau went up the first time. 1984 was a great year that I'll always remember because ... a Canadian was in space. I think you can praise the man, his accomplishments and his manner and separate that from legitimate criticism. There is anger in the land from all directions. Pandemic laid everything bare. (Why no Royal Commission on how and why 60K fellow citizens died?) but everyone has a smartphone and social media have been around a long time now. Something has happened to our brains. We talk to people online that we've never met before and type things we would never say to that individual in person. I think our brains have been rewired and this is part one of the inevitable singularity.
I voted for the liberals in 2015 because I was 20 and thought weed
should be legal and Harper’s grey ass was depressing. The Muslim stuff did NOT help. Politics are aesthetics and that was the vibe at the time. Not sorry, don’t regret it
Some feedback kids….your parenting and life duties are not new(s), life in the 1950’s was not better than the flexibility and freedom offered in the workplace post Covid. I’m an early subscriber, I joined and promoted the Line in the beginning and I’m going to ‘remain and see’/ ‘tolerate’. I was impressed with the information / journalism and how it was delivered in the beginning. How is it that now you need so much more time to deliver on your topics, over an hour or 1 hr 15 and I suggest you look at how much time is taken up by the rants, the effort to articulate every aspect of ‘personal thoughts’ is not always of interest to your audience. The self disclosures are becoming unappealing and starting to reflect the possibility of inflated sense of self importance not how much we listeners want to hear.
I will continue to listen and sort out the valuable information, but respectfully could you pullback on all the personal opinions and less use of curse words to communicate your personal passions, which I’m much less interested in. (I’m a recently retired business woman/ who had two mat leaves 6 months and 12 months from health care shift work, and have managed to create a great relationship grown kids and grandkids).
Ya, a gentleman in TVO (forgot his name) once said that we need to take India’s concerns about terrorism seriously. If we want India to stop doing what they did to Nijjar, then we need to tell the Khalistani community (not Sikhs) that they stop promoting violence and put them through a deradicalization program.
Harper started that process of deradicalization, Trudeau suspended it. If Carney is serious, he’d restart it. Also while we are at it, let’s remember the 300+ Canadians who were murdered by the bombing of Air India 182.
Quite a missed opportunity to be introspective and call out the massive failure of foreign policy that was Trudeau’s values based diplomacy.
Case in point: Mexico. Mexico has not accepted the invitation to attend G7. Mexican ambassador says relations are in 6 year low (they have 6 year presidential terms)
Trudeau was a massive Foreign policy disaster.
P.S.: You folks have criticized Trudeau FP but we need a reminder.
Glad we are all enjoying the political entertainment. As our editors suggested, it's all just fun till someone gets poked in the eye. 2026 will be better yet!
Ms. Gerson's disappointment at the nation not rising to greatness in response to some name calling and economic punishment is a little surprising. There is no nation to rise. We do not have autonomy and certainly no defining culture. Globalisation and years of culturicide by the LPC ensured this.
As noted elsewhere, Trudeau minor isn't as much hated as despised. He was a vacuous windsock, and woke was the prevailing wind. Those who voted for him are contemptible, and they mindlessly transferred their support to Mr. Carney. And so he is now despised, as one of them. The irony lies in the fact the LPC supporters view Mr. Trump's supporters as morons.
Bad news, you are not conservatives. The old Progressive Conservative Party (I miss it too) was basically the LPC with brains. While both editors claim innumeracy, they clearly understand that just because you have a credit card, doesn't mean you have money.
It would be highly beneficial to identify who is making the decisions at the White House. It sure as hell isn't Trump. He is just the blithering idiot of a showman. I would like to think our behind the scenes people are getting a grasp as to how decisions are made.
Hilarious, I am just listening to Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro talking about how both Trump and Elon are already cooling the fires of their fight. While I appreciate your work sometimes you should listen to American commentators.
I don't think you should take it at face value that Trump and Elon are all good now just because people who have a vested interest in avoiding the appearance of disunity are telling us that they've kissed and made up.
Why would you even give these clowns your time? They are self serving monsters, encouraging the horrors of executing innocents around the world. in Canada we live in a democracy last I checked, with minimal body counts. Even though The Line is complicit I’d rather spend my time in Canadian values than listen to the last gasps of the American empire.
I think Musk has ended whatever substance-fueled bender led to him escalating the fight on Thursday, and is probably freaking out at the consequences in cold,sober light of today. It doesn’t mean anything Musk said wasn’t what he really thought - just that it was incredibly intemperate and ill-considered to get into a fight with a president with the power to crush you and your business.
I don’t think the Line was suggesting that people hate Trudeau for irrational reasons. They were referring to automatically transitioning that hate to Carney like he was some reincarnation of Trudeau.. and so far one cant make that claim.
People don't hate Trudeau for irrational reasons, or at least many don't.
Trudeau ran a decade-long active and deliberate campaign of destruction on the Canada we grew up in and were proud of before he came to power. He earned every speck of animosity that many people have for him, including myself who actually voted for him in 2015 (yay legal weed and less so electoral reform!).
He spent fantastic amounts of money on redistribution and nonsense, while productivity went backwards and standard of living fell. He made our justice system a joke and let crime spiral out of control. He denigrated Canadian symbols, traditions, and identity, especially anything connected with British English Canada. He displayed particular contempt for any white men who weren't completely on board with self-flagellation, while going so far as to embrace insane conspiracy theories like the Kamloops mass grave mirage to boost the victim profile of every other group. He busted open the floodgates to effectively indiscriminate mass immigration, without really any public debate or even much announcement, drastically changing the demographics of our cities and overwhelming our infrastructure. He oversaw the biggest increase in house prices in our country's history, pricing entire generations out of the housing market and acted like this was no big deal at all. He corrupted our media with his payoffs and subsidies. He politicized the public service and judiciary with deeply ideological appointments. He played cynical procedural games in Parliament and avoided accountability for a huge number of scandals. He embraced insanity like UNDRIP and made infrastructure impossible to build. He ran the 2021 election in a shockingly slimy way by calling it while Covid was still active, then demonizing the unvaccinated and gun owners in order to avoid accountability for government waste and overreach. And I'm missing a bunch of examples. He spent his entire term wasting resources, missing opportunities, dividing every available group against another, all while carrying on the most smug, self-satisfied attitude. Matt and Jen did a spectacular job of documenting the many failures of the Trudeau regime, much of it in real time. They shouldn't be so fast to forget these.
And yes, it was especially galling that he kept getting away with it. Finally it was looking like Canadians had figured it out, and were able to focus and see through the bullshit long enough to install a new government that would undo some of the damage, uncover some of the corruption that was permanently stalled in committee, reverse some of the trends, and restore hope to those who had felt targeted and toremented for an entire decade.
But in the end, Trudeau really did get away with it, and the absurdly cynical installation of Mark Carney was just the latest example of how Trudeau and his enablers avoided comeuppance. That Carney avoided addressing any of the 10-year record of the party he was hand-picked to take over, and rather ran his election on a fictional boogeyman campaign against his new friend Donald Trump, abetted by the Globe and Mail, just adds butter cream frosting and a cherry on top.
So I can understand how this anger has transferred directly to Mark Carney. The bad guys weren't brought to justice or even chastised for their behaviour, the reset didn't happen, and while the pace of devastation might slow for a little while (if that), I don't see the trajectory changing.
And don't say "oh only a Liberal could (promise to) make this or that minor change". If Poilievre won a 230 seat majority last fall on a "fuck the media we don't care what they say" campaign, his party sure wouldn't be constrained by what criticisms pundits would have. Especially as half of the legacy media would be packing their shit right now and cleaning out their desks for the unemployment line with the end of subsidies and CBC funding.
What is clear to me from your second sentence is that you are one of the many who hate Justin Trudeau for irrational reasons. What Trudeau made very clear in both his run up to and time as PM is that he truly believes that everything he did and wanted to do would ultimately be for the benefit of Canada and Canadians. That your starting premise is that he “deliberately” planned to destroy Canada is therefore illogical. Furthermore, in any form of democracy, including a representative democracy like our own, it is illogical to assume that a single person’s view of the country, its history, culture, laws, etc., is absolutely accurate.
There are many reasons to believe Justin Trudeau did and would continue to harm the country. You however have not presented them rationally. Just because you may not like a certain political path, or action, does not make it wrong. The vast majority of the world functions in shades of gray, vice stark black and white.
To Justin Trudeau "deliberate destruction" of pre-2015 Canada probably felt more like "I'm gonna make transformative change!".
But I will clarify in one respect: some of the destructive results were brought about by negligence and incompetence while trying to make changes, and others were as a result of the changes going 'as planned'. But the decisions to make those changes, in many cases to fix things that weren't broken, were deliberate.
My point is that he didn't just have a run of bad luck or bad circumstances. He made choices and the results of those choices messed up the country.
I’m a semantics guy, so words matter and mean what they have been defined to mean. Now your points are rational.
To be clear, to deliberately destruct and to deliberately make decisions do not mean anywhere near the same thing. Also to be clear, while I agree with you that virtually all policies Justin Trudeau implemented or tried to implement were harmful to the country and our “national fabric,” there are other political perspectives that can and have been reasonably and rationally argued. Just because you and I disagree with those other perspectives does not mean we are right.
Vile belittlement of those we disagree with only looks bad on us, and those who would agree with our belittling. Yes, the same applies to the other side of the argument.
❤️🇨🇦
For someone who self-identified as voting Liberal in 2015, I find your account of your change in mind to be opaque and quite dubious. You literally pivoted in your post from a superficial duo of preferred policies as a half-sentence justification for voting Liberal, to then listing out a torrent of post-2015 Conservative talking points and accusations. I am left with absolutely no idea of what the heck you were surprised by. When exactly was the first time that Trudeau ever did something that you were actually *surprised* by? Just who did you actually think he was in the 2015 election?
I thought Trudeau was another ordinary cynical politician the night he announced his leadership bid in 2012, and very little surprised me with him in his time in power, beyond the galling lie on electoral reform and the harassment of Jody Wilson-Raybould.
He did not actually "get away" with much of anything. He never recovered his peak popularity nor another majority after his first term, he served as Prime Minister for a time duration of a typical Prime Minister, his voting support fell below 2015 Harper levels after a similar amount of time in power, and he faced the ignominy of being forced out of power by his own party. He's now quietly faded away from political life like every past Prime Minister with no current political power, whatsoever (whereas Stephen Harper had a post-PM role as Chair of the Conservative Party Fund).
As to voting Liberal in 2015, I was younger and more naive, and I was annoyed at Harper for - ironically - letting the housing market climb too fast (including stuff like 40 year mortgages and too low too long interest rates) and increasing immigration too much. I was actually starting to warm up to the CPC toward the end of their term but always felt it was very stupid to keep marijuana illegal, and important to get electoral reform passed (in my imagination this was sure to be MMP), so yah those were the issues I voted on.
Trudeau's policies beyond the headline ones were either vague or poorly publicized and I figured I was otherwise voting for Paul Martin in colourful socks. Liberals cared about the little guy so they would return to sensible policies on population intake and housing, and not change much else of what was working, right? At the end of the the crazy-polling 2015 election I also figured the Liberals would get a minority so if things went sideways we could always bring Harper (or his replacement) back pretty easily.
Well 10 years later we got a population perpetually micro-dosed on gummies, "hold my beer" on every policy I disliked about Harper, elections that can go between one party's majority and another's with a 1.5% swing, and disastrous handling of every file that was working just fine before, just for the hell of it.
Trudeau got away with lots. He got re-elected twice when he shouldn't have, and got to govern for the last four years like he had a majority that he absolutely did not earn or deserve, making some of his most significant changes along the way.
You have identified the issues that you voted on, but that still does not clarify what your initial impressions of Trudeau were. You thought you were voting for "Paul Martin in colourful socks" - why? What specifically reminded you of Paul Martin?
What were the most "significant changes" in policy from 2019 to 2024 that the NDP did not readily support? You can debate the merits of the NDP's choices in this time period, but you cannot blame one man for specific policy changes, let alone actual governance or societal outcomes, and at the same time gloss over the two-party support for said policies. Either Trudeau's governance agenda fundamentally had appeal among the support base of two different political parties, or it did not. You cannot give a rational assessment of a politician's legacy without an objective accounting of where they ignored or defied pushback and where they actually received broad-based encouragement.
I'm not quite sure what you are asking here. I guess I failed to conduct sufficient psycho-political analysis on the leader in question before seeing him in action. I think the rest of his record speaks for itself. And thanks to centralization of power in the PMO (another Liberal 'hold my beer' to a bad trend started by Harper) it really IS Trudeau's record. He was personally the one in the driver's seat to an extent that I also didn't anticipate.
As to the NDP, as soon as their metric for success became "keeping the Conservatives out of power", there were no Liberal policies they wouldn't go along with. Jagmeet Singh may or may not have been an explicit Liberal operative, but it doesn't matter because his actions would have been no different if he was.
You have seemingly hinted that you did not rationally scrutinize Trudeau in 2015, but that you have since derived a more rational analysis of the man. I would respectfully submit that you have simply *never* scrutinized the man in an objective manner; if you did, you would be able to explain in deeper detail *what surprised you* about the man. What made you believe that the man would behave differently in power than he ended up doing?
*What specifically* in Trudeau's character reminded you of Paul Martin? Whatever your impressions of the man were in 2015, your impressions came from somewhere, something, or someone, and I have no idea what that something or who that someone is. You say your impressions were mistaken, I only ask *where* they came from?
"there were no Liberal policies they wouldn't go along with."
This is factually incorrect. The Harper majority parliament of 2011-2015 tabled 100+ motions of time allocation, and the Trudeau majority parliament of 2015-2019 tabled a high but lesser number of time allocation motions, with the effect of cutting off opposition scrutiny. I am not aware of anyone claiming that many time allocation motions were submitted during the 2019-2024 minority years. In fact, the opposite happened, with the Liberals being unmotivated to the point of advancing legislation at a snail's pace, like with the bad Online Harms Bill that sat in parliament for a full year before dying with the election call. As far as I am aware, the NDP joined the Conservatives in protesting the government' fall 2024 refusal to abide by a motion to disclose certain documents. They certainly were not begging the government to rush through more legislation, at the very least.
That all aside, to whatever extent Jagmeet Singh was submissive to the Liberal government, you have not attempted to explain *why* the NDP was desperate to keep Conservatives out of power. Coalition-building is a two-way street, and if Pierre Poilievre was publicly insulting you and accusing you of being motivated purely by a pension policy, why would you want to work with him rather than a PM who does not publicly insult you?
So you are saying that by falling for Liberal bullshit once, when I was younger and much less politically engaged, I am permanently disqualified from pointing out any of the negative policies and outcomes that came from that government, all of which I should have anticipated? If that's the standard I think we are all fucked.
What surprised me about Trudeau is that he didn't continue the centrist Liberal government of the 90's and early 2000's, acting as charming figurehead while advisors did the real work. Instead he embraced the worst stereotypes (about both him and his party) warned about by what seemed like hysterical right-wingers at the time. I was also surprised that Canadians put up with his nonsense and didn't kick Trudeau to the curb at the earliest opportunity.
The NDP made token resistance to the Liberals but if they weren't willing to bring down the government over illegal withholding of documents relating to a major scandal, they were de facto complicit.
I'm not really sure what your position or goal is here. Are you defending Trudeau's record? Do things seem good to you now compared to 2015?
> He did not actually "get away" with much of anything.
He continued to govern and did so for a decade. That's "getting away with it".
Every Prime Minister makes mistakes, and few Prime Ministers have their careers ended by only a single mistake. Whether or not any particular Prime Minister made worse mistakes than most other Prime Ministers is very much a partisan and politically fraught question.
I have not seen a person accuse Trudeau of being the worst Prime Minister who has also shown the civic awareness to acknowledge any of the most major scandals that occurred under any Conservative Prime Ministers.
> and few Prime Ministers have their careers ended by only a single mistake
I think "single mistake" is incorrect.
Blackface
"thank you for your donation"
SNC Lavelin
"This will be the last FPTP election"
that took me only the time it took to type to think about it without bothering to capitalize properly and I'm only picking ones where EVERYONE agrees he was wrong and/or lying.
"Single mistake" indeed.
I did not mean that Trudeau was only guilty of a single mistake - I mean that mistakes tend to be accumulated over time, and it is almost never a single mistake but rather a series of mistakes that bring down a Prime Minister.
The line at which a series of mistakes become a fatal blow is always going to be context-dependent and determined by competing factors such as the perceived upsides of the incumbent Prime Minister. A Prime Minister's mistakes will be more likely to be consequential when the opposition is higher quality and more competitive. For those reasons, a Prime Minister is not necessarily spoiled from lack of accountability simply by continuing to hold office after a series of poor judgment calls. Democracy is the kind of system where you thrive simply by being better than the alternatives, and the alternatives also pay an electoral price for their own mistakes as well.
Well that's the thing. I think the "context" was simply that LPC voters were okay with basically anything as long as it was Justin Trudeau who did the bad thing in which case it wasn't bad and anyone saying that it is bad is probably an awful bigot and a bad person.
Going back to the original point from @krm1215727... yeah... Justin Trudeau really did get away with all of his scandals and with being a generally really bad at the actual job Prime Minister.
Why? Well people have their own theories, but my personal theory is that a lot of voters just really liked voting for the nepo-baby. It's really that simple. Canadian voters just like the celebrity culture nepo-baby Prime Minister who has the right feels.
Justin Trudeau really kind of sucked at delivering on the job, but ... well a lot of people liked the feeling and the vibes of Trudeau so he got a pass on all his crap in a way that no one does... because he had the last name. (Can you imagine how badly Stephanne Dion would have been destroyed if he'd become Prime Minister and had only half of Trudeau's failures)... Yeouch.
Ultimately it all comes back to voters. Democracy is great, but there is no magical law of nature that stops voters, caucuses and parties from making dumb decisions... such as the LPC caucus voting once again to give their leader the power to ignore all their complaints no matter how bad he may end up being at the job in a year or two. (Honestly, when a caucus votes against the reform act provisions they're really confessing what they really think about their own competence as MPs and how much they'd prefer a big daddy in charge to tell them what to do.)
Exactly, all the whiney bitching about the Trudeau years is the democracy we live in. The fact that the Conservatives couldn’t muster up a decisive win through yet another election cycle is like saying the Edmonton Oilers should have won last night.
Harper destroyed the notion of a conservative majority, or continuing with the hockey logic, putting Gretzky in the house doesn’t work any more. PP isn’t the McJesus of the Conservative movement, it’s time for a trade.Duh.
First question should be to all whiners what are you doing about it. Campaigning, running for office, sacrificing your cozy comfy life for the sake of country and democracy? Second, perhaps a move to the US is best advised where whiny bitching means violence and intimidation, the crumbling empire can use the foot soldiers.
Are you both fucking stupid?
The reason for the fuck Trudeau/Carney anger is the stupid destructive shit they have or want to do: climate alarmism. Genderwang tranny shit. Mass graves genocide hoax. Mass immigration. Public service bloat. Housing. Censorship. CBC & media subsidies. Central Digital Currency. Youth unemployment. Safe supply. Catch and release b/c of a judiciary out of touch with the average Joe. All the bullshit apologies. All the scandals. And people looked past all that and voted them in anyways. It’s all fucking gross. It’s not just fuck Trudeau/Carney, it’s fuck everyone who voted for this gross gross shit
Snort. I won't delete this or ban, since everyone needs to blow off some steam, but for everyone else paying attention, if this had been directed at someone else, this would have been a comment ban.
I keep the comments as civil as possible, Roddy, because that's good for business, and The Line is a business. Don't make a habit of this.
Geez Matt, Jen used to drop 50 f-bombs a show and you never scolded her for it. I was just channeling her vibe.
Nothing to add to my above.
Exactly. The fuckety fuck fuck reports from the heartlands of consumer greed set the bar. Without the fk Trudeau/Carney mission The Line flounders. This is what you get with self serving opinions, irreverence, instead of unbiased reporting. Suck it up.
10 likes to this comment, for the wording, esp. the first sentence. And for the concise, properly widely encompassing contents. Carney will drive Canada into the hole that he helped Trudeau to dig. For Carney, Canada is nothing but a plaything to experiment on at the end of his working life, that is evident from examining the public information available regarding him. I wish him a short and a very harsh ride.
"Canada is nothing but a plaything to experiment on at the end of his working life"
Ummm, how is that not more or less equally true of every Canadian Prime Minister? Every Canadian Prime Minister had their career peak in their time as Prime Minister and never achieved anything more consequential after that. Every Canadian Prime Minister "experiments" with what they believe is their superior knowledge on what would benefit the country.
You know, there's smarter criticisms available to make of Carney than the garbage that the Canadian conservative movement keeps regurgitating. Like the Trojan Horse Bill C-2 that Conservatives currently seem incapable of questioning even the slightest.
Just finished listening your segment on "fuck Carney" sentiment, and I think Matt's theory of "anger based on Trudeau keep getting away with things" is quite on point. Also personally, I wished that Trudeau hadn't resigned so that we have a historical record of Canadian voters, by massive landslide, rejected Trudeau. Not just some opinion polls that existed in archived Wikipedia or 338 page, but in documented historical record of the country.
The fact that didn't happen because Carney managed to salvage Liberal party disappointed me, and I can see people who shares the same feeling as me (but more intense) will channel that frustration onto Carney. This is the pattern of Canadian electoral history, with Turner, Campbell, or Eves in ON were rejected by voters in large part as rejection of their predecessors.
If in 40-50 years or so people read the legacy of Trudeau and saw "he never lost an election" as part of it, they'd think that Trudeau was some great PM that defined Canadian identity in a way he wanted it to be, and no record shown to disagree with that piece.
I doubt it. Decades later we know Trudeau Sr and Mulroney were unpopular. The fact that they weren't shown the door by the electorate doesn't change that. JT was far from the first leader or the last who will leave rather than face certain defeat. History will record that.
We don't really know that though. Mulroney was considered this elder statesman who wisely brought in free trade, and Trudeau Sr. is practically venerated as a saint in eastern Canada for "giving" us the highly dubious gifts of the Charter and multiculturalism.
Mulroney wasn't looked at that way in 1993 and neither was Trudeau in 1984. Give it 30 years and even JT may be looked at favourably. That won't change the record on how he was looked at when he left office.
Mulroney still isn't viewed as an "elder statesman".
Brian Mulroney is the guy who was secretly meeting with an arms dealer to accept large amounts of cash in brown manilla envelopes for "consulting fees". (Pro-tip... when you're doing that, that's when you know you've become the villain of the story.)
Say what you will about Justin Trudeau... he didn't do that.
I think that glaring example of corruption these days tends to be perceived as an exception rather than the rule of how Brian Mulroney behaved himself as Prime Minister. But yeah, that scandal will rightfully never be forgotten in our lifetimes.
There's something about "get paid cash in secret meetings with arms dealers" that goes a fair bit beyond the norm for Canadian political scandals. Far enough beyond that it redefines everything. I mean... can you think of anything close to that from any other Prime Minister?
At some point... misdeeds get close to "he was a great priest and really tended the congregation well... if we leave aside that part at the end where he absconded to a non-extradition country with a pile of money stolen from the orphans and widows fund, he did great things for the community".
The difference is that Liberal in 1984 and PC in 1993 were decimated, while Liberal in 2025 increased their vote share and seats.
That won't change the fact that people will know Trudeau would have certainly lost. Like we know Pearson would have lost in 1968.
Did we? As a millenial new Canadian, this is the first I've heard of it. Before this I only know that he's the best PM Canada ever had, and the airport.
Well, those who study the history would. He won two minorities in elections with near identical results. Similar to Trudeau in 2019 and 21. He saw the writing on the wall and started planning his exit. Trudeau did not.
This is a very normal Canadian political move. Jump ship right before you get decimated. It's not a particularly novel thing, and even the liberals winning another election isn't that unprecedented. What remains to be seen is if Carney can do what many have previously struggled with and actually separate from his predecessor. He's certainly trying, at least.
As someone who has hated the Liberal Party for as long as I ever been aware of its existence, I am willing to give Carney the beneifit of the doubt, for now. That being said, I can see how some would hate Carney for being parachuted in to the leadership and not having any accountability for the previous 10 years.
The hatred doesn’t really surprise me, having seen the ingrained resentment of Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals well into the ‘90s in Alberta. I think there’s an appetite to see these unpopular leaders face a comeuppance, preferably in the form of a brutal electoral defeat. Trudeau Sr skipped out on his own terms, and the electoral beat-down fell on John Turner instead. Justin Trudeau did likewise, but the Liberals didn’t even experience the electoral drubbing that Trudeau detractors craved.
I am happy to say that prior to seeing Junior at the Throne Speech I had not thought of him at all since at least February. (I noted the consternation about the footwear he wore at that event but as the joke goes, I don’t have any less respect for him now, than I did before he made that sartorial choice.) Despite my concerns about how Carney actually will govern, his arrival has been such a breath of fresh air from a gravitas/seriousness/communication style perspective that he has largely scrubbed Junior from my memory. Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.
But yeah, regarding those concerns about how Carney will govern. (And also yeah, about that axiom, “we are recording early so something is gonna’ happen that we would want to address”.) Apparently, late this afternoon Carney responded to a question by declaring that if a Province doesn’t want a pipeline running through its territory, then no pipeline shall traverse that Province. Sorry, but this is genuinely disqualifying for a PM. Now, maybe he will walk this back after a night of sober thought and consultations with some Constitutional experts. And we should always judge PM’s by their actual actions and not their (potentially) off-the-cuff words. But this is a VERY bad sign. Because I am willing to give Carney a shot, I was shaking my head at Jen’s neighbour instantaneously replacing the Fuck Trudeau flag with a Fuck Carney flag. But if Carney sticks to this position, I could see me coming to share that sentiment.
I find it strange that Alberta doesn't want any other province to veto a pipeline, but believes it has a right to blackmail the country into something it wants. The "pipeline or we secede" seems to me to be the other side of the same coin as 'no one wants a pipeline here".
Pipelines have significant and immediate benefits: they bring investment, jobs, and wealth. That’s why Alberta and Saskatchewan want them. Opposition to pipelines on trumped-up environmental concerns is petty and gross. It’s jealousy, and that just gross. So much of Canada just grosses me out.
The benefits of pipelines are massive. The costs are small. A country that wasn’t governed by cynics would get them built
I mean there's the classic response here of "we did actually build pipelines under Trudeau", but my point is why does what Alberta and Saskatchewan want matter more than what Manitoba or Ontario wants? To flip it, Alberta doesn't like green energy incentives, but other provinces do. So does that mean we should ignore Alberta? We live in a confederation with a weak federal government, that means provinces are going to have a say
2 things.
Alberta/Sask does nothing to block the ability of another province to grow their economy or trade.
Alberta leads the Nation in green energy investment and projects and it’s not even close. It’s the Wild West of windmills and solar panels out here. This is why Premier Smith put a 6 month pause (now expired) on permit issuance while regulation caught up. Hasn’t slowed down as a consequence.
It depends on the merits of the thing.
What are Canadians supposed to think about a Carney supposition that:
-Alberta wants another pipeline to BC tidewater.
-This BC pipeline could make the “approved list” of projects deemed to be in the national interest.
-Any Province that is facing a “national interest” pipeline traveling through it can say no, thanks.
Pipelines that cross Provincial boundaries fall under federal jurisdiction, but Carney’s waffling suggests that he will not spend one cent of his political capital to override Provincial objections and approve a pipeline anyway. (Certainly not a pipeline through Quebec, with a Quebec election looming).
Pipeline approvals are exclusive federal jurisdiction. The primary role of the federal government is maintaining unrestricted and unbiased movement of people, goods, services and capital within national borders. A federal government that fails on that fundamental requirement lacks the authority to govern.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness in mitigating the risks of audience capture. On that broader topic of malaise/polarization/anger, I think even talking about it openly and with compassion is a good start! Just how you speak directly to people's behaviour, you speak to those emotions too. Maybe if institutions and leaders had been better at doing that during the woke era, that pressure would have been released? Anyway, thanks for the podcast! Also, loved the Marc Garneau article!
I got the opportunity to meet Marc Garneau years ago when I gave him a tour of our company’s test lab and manufacturing facilities. Like Matt says, he was a thoughtful and serious guy. I asked him how he found the transition from engineering to politics, also got to chat a bit about scuba diving on the coast and the former Navy ships sunk as artificial reefs. I feel it’s a real loss that he left politics, and that Trudeau didn’t properly use an incredibly capable person who could’ve made greater contributions to the success of the Liberal government.
A few things.
I’m laughing my ass off at Rowdy Roddy’s comment above. I mean he’s not wrong? That said - I haven’t carried it forward to Carney. I still hate Trudeau, and some of his merry band of idiots that are still hanging around, but I’m into giving the new guy a chance based on what he ran on. And on that note..
I think Carney is doing a good job at the moment. Not perfect! The seeming allowance of giving one province a “veto” over a “national project” is a joke. It’s an abdication of responsibility, and it just opens the door to a party like the Bloc being able to throw a stick into the wheels of confederation and drive further division. BUT, I do think he’s getting progress on Conservative priorities that Conservatives would have a very hard time doing themselves. And I like this. I also appreciate the tone and tenor of leadership he’s bringing forward. Juxtaposed with the circus going on down South, it looks even better.
As to Trudeau getting what’s coming to him… I understand, but justice rarely looks like what you think it should. Let’s look at the facts for a moment.
1. He lost his marriage
2. He was humiliated by DJT on his way out the door
3. He was humiliated by most of his cabinet quitting, being forced to step down, and then by the turnaround Carney was able to achieve once he was gone.
4. His last 4 years in power he could go nowhere in the country without insane levels of vitriol being thrown at him. Including a family ski trip to Nelson BC.
5. His signature legislation got tossed by his own party.
6. He is respected by no one anywhere. He is held by most of his own Country (and the world). As a fool.
Trudeau got what he deserved, he will go down as the worst Prime Minister of all time, and live long enough to understand that. For a man driven by vanity- that’s going to sting.
I was in high school when Marc Garneau went up the first time. 1984 was a great year that I'll always remember because ... a Canadian was in space. I think you can praise the man, his accomplishments and his manner and separate that from legitimate criticism. There is anger in the land from all directions. Pandemic laid everything bare. (Why no Royal Commission on how and why 60K fellow citizens died?) but everyone has a smartphone and social media have been around a long time now. Something has happened to our brains. We talk to people online that we've never met before and type things we would never say to that individual in person. I think our brains have been rewired and this is part one of the inevitable singularity.
I agree with the commenter called KRM.
I voted for the liberals in 2015 because I was 20 and thought weed
should be legal and Harper’s grey ass was depressing. The Muslim stuff did NOT help. Politics are aesthetics and that was the vibe at the time. Not sorry, don’t regret it
Some feedback kids….your parenting and life duties are not new(s), life in the 1950’s was not better than the flexibility and freedom offered in the workplace post Covid. I’m an early subscriber, I joined and promoted the Line in the beginning and I’m going to ‘remain and see’/ ‘tolerate’. I was impressed with the information / journalism and how it was delivered in the beginning. How is it that now you need so much more time to deliver on your topics, over an hour or 1 hr 15 and I suggest you look at how much time is taken up by the rants, the effort to articulate every aspect of ‘personal thoughts’ is not always of interest to your audience. The self disclosures are becoming unappealing and starting to reflect the possibility of inflated sense of self importance not how much we listeners want to hear.
I will continue to listen and sort out the valuable information, but respectfully could you pullback on all the personal opinions and less use of curse words to communicate your personal passions, which I’m much less interested in. (I’m a recently retired business woman/ who had two mat leaves 6 months and 12 months from health care shift work, and have managed to create a great relationship grown kids and grandkids).
Re: Modi
Ya, a gentleman in TVO (forgot his name) once said that we need to take India’s concerns about terrorism seriously. If we want India to stop doing what they did to Nijjar, then we need to tell the Khalistani community (not Sikhs) that they stop promoting violence and put them through a deradicalization program.
Harper started that process of deradicalization, Trudeau suspended it. If Carney is serious, he’d restart it. Also while we are at it, let’s remember the 300+ Canadians who were murdered by the bombing of Air India 182.
Re: India
Quite a missed opportunity to be introspective and call out the massive failure of foreign policy that was Trudeau’s values based diplomacy.
Case in point: Mexico. Mexico has not accepted the invitation to attend G7. Mexican ambassador says relations are in 6 year low (they have 6 year presidential terms)
Trudeau was a massive Foreign policy disaster.
P.S.: You folks have criticized Trudeau FP but we need a reminder.
Glad we are all enjoying the political entertainment. As our editors suggested, it's all just fun till someone gets poked in the eye. 2026 will be better yet!
Ms. Gerson's disappointment at the nation not rising to greatness in response to some name calling and economic punishment is a little surprising. There is no nation to rise. We do not have autonomy and certainly no defining culture. Globalisation and years of culturicide by the LPC ensured this.
As noted elsewhere, Trudeau minor isn't as much hated as despised. He was a vacuous windsock, and woke was the prevailing wind. Those who voted for him are contemptible, and they mindlessly transferred their support to Mr. Carney. And so he is now despised, as one of them. The irony lies in the fact the LPC supporters view Mr. Trump's supporters as morons.
Bad news, you are not conservatives. The old Progressive Conservative Party (I miss it too) was basically the LPC with brains. While both editors claim innumeracy, they clearly understand that just because you have a credit card, doesn't mean you have money.
It would be highly beneficial to identify who is making the decisions at the White House. It sure as hell isn't Trump. He is just the blithering idiot of a showman. I would like to think our behind the scenes people are getting a grasp as to how decisions are made.
Hilarious, I am just listening to Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro talking about how both Trump and Elon are already cooling the fires of their fight. While I appreciate your work sometimes you should listen to American commentators.
I don't think you should take it at face value that Trump and Elon are all good now just because people who have a vested interest in avoiding the appearance of disunity are telling us that they've kissed and made up.
Why would you even give these clowns your time? They are self serving monsters, encouraging the horrors of executing innocents around the world. in Canada we live in a democracy last I checked, with minimal body counts. Even though The Line is complicit I’d rather spend my time in Canadian values than listen to the last gasps of the American empire.
I think Musk has ended whatever substance-fueled bender led to him escalating the fight on Thursday, and is probably freaking out at the consequences in cold,sober light of today. It doesn’t mean anything Musk said wasn’t what he really thought - just that it was incredibly intemperate and ill-considered to get into a fight with a president with the power to crush you and your business.
I don’t think the Line was suggesting that people hate Trudeau for irrational reasons. They were referring to automatically transitioning that hate to Carney like he was some reincarnation of Trudeau.. and so far one cant make that claim.