nearing the end (of an error)…
It had to come to this.
As his policy and politics drift, Trudeau, the ‘boy wonder’ and his merry band of pranksters in Ottawa are staring reality in the face: a Canadian electorate that’s caught on to the prime minister’s bafflegab and pretentious Liberal bullshit. Mindless crap that preached, finger-wagged, and legislated poorly-framed laws that are now falling flat on their arse like dominoes thanks to the Courts.
That it took so long to unwind the feral Liberal ( yes, feral ) nonsense, well…that’s another story. But it’s gobsmacking, nevertheless, to review just how much garbage legislation has hit the fan: A plastics ban that aims to turn all things toxic; a carbon ‘charge’ (as it’s being called now) that overshoots federal jurisdiction by a country-mile (and then boomerangs in the opposite direction, with exemptions for home heating oil); the nearly-impossible-to-get-anything-approved regulatory process that vaporizes any whiff of a new pipeline. And then there’s the heavy-handed and out-of-sync rules to police online platforms that punish our country’s internet users instead. Oh, and pushes nascent local journalism that depends on social media into bankruptcy! Who would have thunk?
More foo foo in the Liberal’s fairy dust: An “independent” in name only Senate can’t slow Trudeau’s gang down for a nano-second. So-called legislative review committees (in Parliament and in the Senate committees) can’t see or won’t fix glaring problems. And the Supreme Court is left to try and course-correct, after the fact.
And beyond the ill-conceived legislation, there are the staggering diplomatic gaffes that diminish our place in the world. The over-the-top sanctimonious “thou shalt” scoldings by the sock boy to world leaders. Most recently, telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to exercise “maximum restraint” as “the world was watching.”
Admittedly, we’re no fans of Trudeau (the younger). He sure as hell ain’t his daddy! In December 2018, we posted a blog that got us into a lot of hot water with liberal Liberals. But quite honestly, this isn’t personal. There’s just so much at stake, we couldn’t and will not remain silent.
Ordinary Canadians are watching this tragic movie play out — The Great Unravelling — in agonizingly slow-motion. Our ‘boy wonder’ was at one time the disco queen, and now the mirror-ball has crashed through the floor.
WHO’S DIRECTING THE SHIT SHOW?
Ever wonder who’s directing Ottawa’s dog & pony ensemble? Wouldn’t you like to talk to someone in the know and get the inside track on how all these Liberal misjudgements and miscalculations stack up, one after another after another and another one after that?
Of course, no one — nobody in Trudeau’s government — has the temerity to talk outside the bubble (Donna has been chasing Minister of Jobs Randy Bossa Nova for weeks to chat for her National Post column. He’s yet to put her on his dance card). So, we find ourselves imagining what these conversations could sound like; in our heads, thinking out loud, unvarnished blather, yet scripted something like this:
ACT ONE: 2016
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 1: So, ummm, we have to do something to retard the export of that gawd-awful oil & natural gas. It’s killing the planet. How can we slow things down? There must be a way to do it, right?
Government Lackey: Yah, sure. I get your point but the Americans want our oil & gas. We should expect even the Democrats to make a fuss if we don’t keep sending the filth their way. Why don’t we blow up the regulatory process for approving new pipeline builds? That will gum up the works.
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 2: Hell of an idea! The boss will talk up an ‘environmentally responsible’ carbon tax that rakes in money across the country. And then, he’ll change socks and issue generous rebates to millions of Canadians who will embrace the idea of getting free money from their government!
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 1: Damn, you’re good. Diabolically brilliant. We’ll look pristine on the climate change stage and buy votes at the same time.
ACT TWO: 2019
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 1: Okay, so here we go with Bill 69. Yipeee! It’s approved. We’ve up-ended the oil & gas business!
Government Lackey: It’s possible the Supreme Court may not be entirely onside with this new regulatory policy, and the federal carbon tax. But it will take years for the provinces to catch up.
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 2: No worries. By the time the Supreme Court weighs in, we’ll have figured out other strategies.
Government Lackey: Maybe Justin could offer up exemptions on the carbon tax in selected regions of the country?
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 1: Tricky. Catherine McKenna would have have a hissy-fit over carbon tax exceptions. Good thing she’s not in government anymore, eh.
ACT THREE: 2023
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 2: I feel like a pest today. Why don’t we give those hydrocarbon-sucking-dinosaurs a real jolt and completely ban plastics too!!
Government Lackey: I’ll add it to the to-do doo-doo. Consider it done.
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 1: My turn. This will piss them off. Let’s make CBC the only media of size & scale and put private media out of the business of telling Canadians our story. What else can we do?
Government Lackey: Yah, that’s a tough one. Okay, let’s lambast social media platforms — and their evil multi-national owners — make them out to be the bad guys. If they refuse to post Canadian media on Facebook or Instagram or whatever we don’t own, it’ll force Canadians to CBC as their sole source of true and truthful news (wink, wink)!
Trudeau Brain Trust Actor 2: You’re on to something there. Point the finger at the greedy tech giants. I’ve never really understood what they’re going on about or how the internet does what it does, but damn it all to hell if this strategy won’t work, eh.
BULLSHIT BAFFLES BRAINS
“Because it’s 2015,” was at the time, a retort that put a freshly-minted prime minister on the map with fellow travellers who thought “this time it’s gonna be different.” Yet what’s happened in Ottawa since then hasn’t been all that different. The over-reach. The hubris. The delusion. It can’t just be written off as poorly-crafted laws and regulations. It’s beyond redemption. Everything the boy wonder has promised or touched has turned to shite. And while the crap piled up around the fan, the Liberals never calculated that one day the fan might turn on. And it has.
Canadians have been un-electing governments across the country. But we get it: federally, the choices may not appeal to everyone. If you can’t bring yourself to ever consider voting Conservative or NDP…please, please, please…do everyone a favour and get involved in rebuilding a Liberal party that’s presently drunk on cheap plonk and pissed itself; a disgrace to the memory of Lester Pearson, and, yes, Trudeau (the elder).
Canadian Club works wonders this time of year…
This column is the consensus opinion of the writers Donna Kennedy-Glans & Don Hill. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to BEYOND POLARITY — scroll down on your phone or tablet, or look to the right in the panel beside this post. Enter your email to FOLLOW, a wheel spins, hamsters get fed.
Hmmmm. Not your best work. You dipping into the whiskey while you wrote this?
Yo, Rob. Pop Shoppe pop ain’t pop anymore. Try two-and-a-juice and welcome to northern Ontario. Yo!
Ginger Beer was a fave… seltzers were fun, too.
Thanks for the entertaining read Donna.
congratulations, this is without a doubt the best analysis of the trudeau crap show and written so even those with their head up their butt should get the message
Donna, I don’t always agree with you – a good thing; “diversity makes us stronger” and all that sort of tiresome thingy – and I am happy to read contrary opinions. Of course I am even happier to read “confirming” opinions.
I just have one question for you: What the Hell took you so long to put this column together? Yeah, I know, 2018, etc. but you sure could have spoken up sooner as there are many folks who (deservedly) have high regard for your perspective but had drunk (drank?) the LPC Kool-Aid.
In any event, I offer you full marks for putting together this column. Albeit belatedly (you, not me as I just read this column five minutes ago!).
As always, thank you.
Donna I respect you and like some of your posts but this increased name calling is a slippery slope. I will likely spend my limited reading time where people try to stick to a less polarizing discussion of ideas not events and certainly not slagging individuals.
Jim, hmmmm… Okay — full disclosure — at one-time I was attracted to the Edmonton Centre bubble club (recruited by Tommy Banks and his vision for an arts’ city). Tommy was an outstanding Senator. A credit to the Liberal brand. We worked together from time to time when I was at the CBC. As the co-writer of the piece you write-off as a slippery slope, did you read _carefully_ the final paragraphs for _why_ language (such as you object to) is a shout-out for federal Liberals to get their house in order? Poll after poll after poll indicates a terrible reckoning is coming for the federal Liberals. Do you recall how Mr. Mulroney’s PC party was wiped off the map in the last century? Did you know that many former MPs couldn’t even buy a job after being unelected? That’s how much the Mulroney PCs were loathed. What kind of kissy-faced lingo do Liberals in our Edmonton require to say what needs to be said to a prime minister who is clearly bonkers and, by recent accounts, off on ‘personal days’ more than on-the-job _during crisis after crisis after crisis_? In the court of public opinion, you’d best cover your ears because what Donna and I reported is the least offensive of what, I, for one, having been hearing on the ground. Get out of the bubble, please.
You ask me to read your piece critically but do you read MSM through a similar critical lense? The PM’s personal days story does not add up and is likely an inflammatory partisan attack, but hey believe what you want to.
What I object to is the name calling, it is too often a tool used where reasoning fails the writer.
Could the current (or any) PM, who has governed through some pretty unprecedented times, do a better job, yes.
Is the alternative better or worse? I will argue worse because of actions like: endorsing crypto but not really knowing
much about economic theory, disregard for science and the collective good during the pandemic, disparaging public institutions like the BOC, taking coffee to the convoy, living in Stornaway but disavowing that in his everyman image, the list goes on.
From these actions I form an opinion that the current opposition leader should not earn the support of Canadians. And I can do all that without calling him names.
Sigh… You’ve written another episode of what-about-ism. Jim, seriously, who do you think you’re talking to? Or rather should I put it: To whom do you think you’re talking at? The Liberal Party of Canada is in need of a ‘rebuild’. It’s a wake-up call — if you’re indeed a card-carrying Liberal and do the bossa nova — for you and fellow travellers to do what Preston Manning, Ted Byfield, and Stephen Harper did to remake the Conservative brand after Mulroney — rescuing it from political oblivion.
A thought experiment: how do you negotiate with bikers? That’s right — you don’t. And ditto for finding a nice way to remove a vain, self-absorbed, narcissist sitting in the PMO who is very, very concerned with what people say about him…
Time is of the essence.
Well put. I am certainly tired of Justin Trudeau as prime minister, but when when I look at the alternative I will be happy to accept another 4 years of Somebody Else.
In Alberta, Jason Kenney was unpopular enough that the NDP led in the polls for a significant chunk of Kenney’s tenure. As we saw on election day, it looks like people expressed their frustration with Kenney by telling pollsters they would vote NDP, but come election day they couldn’t actually bring themselves to do so. I suspect we are seeing the same thing federally; people are tired of Trudeau, but come election time I can’t really see a majority of Canadians voting for someone like Pierre Poilievre.
The CPC needs to get rid of the extremists in its ranks and elect a moderate leader.
Don, I know who I am dealing with, both with you and the Prime Minister. I have hope each of you can improve your game. If the PM can’t or doesn’t or won’t, well then it is up to the party and I as a member will participate in that process to the degree I choose. If this isn’t resolved it is up to the electorate, but you know that.
My comment (and ask) to Donna and you was to up your game. She has not responded and you have by and large deflected, as is your right. There is no process, like there is in a political party, to force improvement on bloggers (you, I’m sure would prefer journalist but I think one earns that designation and similarly can lose it). So to give you feedback we are left to the comments board. These are simply my comments; to you keep on blogging.
Deflected? Now — that’s an ‘interesting’ rejoinder. Turn that around, Jim. Is it possible that you — yes, you — as a card-carrying large-l Liberal (by self-admission) and fellow Edmonton Centre travellers have created the conditions for this monstrous government to persist through 2025 (unless, of course, Mr. Singh finally sees the light and switches it on). Doing the bossa nova won’t save the party…
As per your crack about journalism and bloggers and the kind of plain talk you have trouble with: You might want to have a boo at law flowing from C-18 and C-11 and stuff like that online harm act thing (two years and counting), which, ummm…. upon closer reading proposes to have some government flack vet every blogger in the country. On side with the team on that one, too? Pray tell…
Wow, why have a comment section at all?
The Russians have an expression, you might find useful (to grok this to-and-fro thread): Both choices are worse. Comments are open to discussion — not a one-way scold like you initiated at the outset. As for ‘real’ & lawyers, try this on for size to understand how the LPC has made things worse for journalism >> https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2023/11/bill-c-18-bailout-government-announces-plans-to-pay-for-35-of-journalist-costs-for-news-outlets-with-116-increase-in-tax-credit-per-employee/ << You're welcome!
Perhaps we could both benefit from the sage advice to “Be curious not judgemental”.