The Correlation Between Incompetence and Voter Confidence

To wit:

The Senate passed an amended version of the Liberal government’s oil tanker ban late on Thursday, while rejecting some last-minute Conservative amendments that sought to emphasize Indigenous land rights as a way to skirt the controversial moratorium.

Bill C-48 passed third reading just before midnight, including an amendment put forward by Independent Sen. Murray Sinclair that would effectively launch a five-year review of the oil tanker ban.

The amended version of the bill will now be passed back to the House of Commons for review, similar to C-69 — another contentious natural resources bill that was heavily amended by the Senate, and widely opposed in oil-rich regions.

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Finance Minister Bill Morneau says in a letter to six right-leaning premiers Friday it’s “unhelpful to threaten national unity” if their demands to change two bills on the verge of being passed in Parliament aren’t met.

(Sidebar: "right-leaning"? The bribed press is sure doing its job!)

The premiers of Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories wrote to the prime minister Monday urging him to amend or abandon bills restricting tanker traffic on part of B.C.’s coast and overhauling the federal environmental-assessment system for major construction projects.

The premiers said changes to the bills are needed to “avoid further alienating provinces” and “focus on uniting the country.”

(Sidebar: I wouldn't get too uppity, Bill -  A House of Commons committee has unanimously asked Finance Minister Bill Morneau to fix a funding shortfall that the Auditor General’s office says is causing cutbacks to its audits on government performance.)

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The Parliamentary Budget Office says that if the Liberals actually want to hit their Paris Climate target, they will need to impose another larger carbon tax on top of the current tax.


Not only that, but they will also need to keep raising the current one – as is currently planned.

(Sidebar: oh, people will love you!)

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Catherine McKenna has announced that the Trudeau Carbon Tax will be imposed on Alberta – against the wishes of the province, and against the obvious democratic choice Albertans made by electing the anti-carbon tax United Conservative Party.

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While Canada debates whether to stop using our resources, most countries are eagerly making more use of theirs. Even as the Obama administration in the U.S. tried getting coal-fired electricity replaced by natural gas and renewables, it was not afraid to let U.S. oil production double and even eliminated the ban on U.S. oil exports to enable production growth.

Norway, considered a climate leader par excellence, has been busily developing its offshore oil and gas reserves. Whether it is Guyanese, African or Middle Eastern oil, Chinese coal or Australian LNG, resource development is proceeding apace everywhere except in Canada.

Other countries understand that global fossil fuel demand, currently at 100 million barrels per day, will not disappear entirely at least for several decades, if at all. Petrochemicals are critical for many products we consume today and technology is not yet available to provide a substitute for oil as a fuel for industrial uses, long-haul transportation, shipping and aviation. ...

It would make sense for Canada to have a carbon policy consistent with its major trading partners, most obviously the United States. However, it does not make sense for Canada to impose high-cost policies on our economy that will drive resource businesses to other jurisdictions where development can still take place.

If Canada decides to go it alone in stopping oil and gas developments, resource provinces will get badly hurt — and so will Canada as a whole. We need a resource policy that allows for responsible development, just like other countries have. That’s not the direction we appear headed in now.

For some reason, none of this inspires people to support Justin whole-heartedly:

According to the new poll, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s approval rating is at its lowest point since he was elected in 2015. Just 32 per cent of respondents said they believe the Trudeau government has done a good job and deserves re-election, compared to 68 per cent who think it’s time for another party to take power.

(Sidebar: clearly thirty-two percent of polled voters aren't poor enough.) 

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If polls are any indication, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is heading for the exit this fall but many of his Liberal MPs have already announced they are leaving or won’t run for re-election.

The departures began even before the SNC-Lavalin scandal erupted this year. In September, Ontario Liberal (and former Air Force officer) Leona Alleslev crossed the floor to join the Conservatives because of disagreements with the government’s handling of the economy and foreign affairs.

“Here at home, we see large amounts of capital investment leaving Canada while tax structures, federal infrastructure problems and politics prevent us from getting goods to market, and deter companies from expanding and undermine our competitiveness. For the first time in many years, Canadians don’t believe that tomorrow will be better than today and that their children’s future will be than theirs,” she said in a statement after crossing the floor.

“Beyond our borders, our position remains vastly diminished. Our foreign policy is disconnected from our trade relationships and our ability to deliver on our defence commitments is undermined by politics,” she added. “We must recognize that foreign policy, trade, defence, and our economy all depend on each other and can’t be viewed separately.”
 

Read the whole thing.

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Trudeau seems to have decided that “attacks on national unity,” which consisted entirely of speaking in its defence, were a promising wedge issue. The “Will X at long last rise to his feet and denounce Y?” rhetorical trope is usually reserved for situations in which Y is some hate group or nefarious cult, and maybe that is how Trudeau regards the gang of six letter-signers.

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A different prime minister might have felt more comfortable than Trudeau simply rejecting the use of the term, as Conservative leader Andrew Scheer did when he agreed that horrible things had happened, but that they didn’t constitute a genocide. You can agree with Scheer’s position or not, but it’s coherent and defensible. 

Trudeau’s? Not so much. You don’t need to grasp quantum computing to realize you simply can’t be the country’s leading champion of reconciliation and the self-confessed overseer of an ongoing genocide at the same time.

It still baffles one how someone incredibly stupid got into his dad's office in the first place.