It's An Election Year!

The campaign for this election is like watching stupid teen-agers pretend to be adults with important things to say. It's cringe-worthy.

Cases in point:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says China uses arbitrary detentions as a tool to achieve its international and domestic political goals.

He brands that as a pressure tactic that is worrying not only to Canada, but to its Western allies.

The time to issue statements like that was months ago, Mr. " ...there’s a level of admiration I actually have for China …. Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime ...", when it really mattered and should have precluded your pitiful phone calls to that basic dictatorship.

China lets its vassal state know that it does not like this "big boy" pants routine one bit:

China accused Canada of not abiding by international norms Friday in response to comments from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who accused Beijing of arbitrarily detaining two Canadians.

Trudeau's remarks are "purely unfounded countercharges that confound black and white," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said.

It smacks of ingratitude after all the money that Chinese businessmen gave to his dad's foundation, too.

A more cynical mindset might suggest that this an attempt, albeit a poor one, to appear grand and in control during an election year but it comes off as weak, transparent (which is more than one could say for his government) and opposite to the love and support he has given China not so long ago.




On a scale of one to ten, how tone-deaf does this sound?:

Is Justin Trudeau just completely lacking in self awareness?

The prime minister actually said on Wednesday that if Canadians want to protect public education, they need a teacher as PM.

“Protecting public education is not a social program or a moral issue, it’s a hard-core economic issue,” Trudeau told a campaign-like stop in Ontario.

“And the fact that Conservatives from Doug Ford to Andrew Scheer don’t seem to understand the value of investing in our public education is yet another reason you need a teacher to continue to be prime minister.”

There is so much wrong with this statement.

Let’s start with the obvious: The prime minister has zero responsibility for our public education systems in Canada. ...

Provincial governments run the public education systems across the country.

Surely, Trudeau learned that in one of the fancy private schools he went to!

Yes, that is the second problem with his statement.

A man who went to an elite private school in Ottawa, Lycee Claudel, which follows a curriculum set by the government of France, and then transferred to Montreal’s private Brebeuf College is saying he knows how to protect public education.

Is that from his time as a teacher at Vancouver’s private West Point Grey Academy, where tuition runs at $23,490 a year for the high school kids Trudeau taught? That tuition level, by the way, is payable after parents already spend $300 just to apply and paid a $3,000 new student enrolment fee.

It’s true that Trudeau also spent some time attending Rockcliffe Park Public School in Ottawa when his father was PM but those were his early years — his formative years were spent in some pretty elite private institutions that have zero connection to our public education system.

Meanwhile, Doug Ford and Andrew Scheer only ever went to their local publicly funded schools. ...

Morneau, who once forgot he owned a villa in France, sent his daughter to Havergal College in Toronto where tuition is $33,850 and the enrolment fee is $8,500.

These guys don’t even realize how out of touch they are.

One cannot pretend at this point that Justin was ever going to run a clean campaign where he lists all of his accomplishments because he has none. So he goes into default "everybody is bad but me" mode.

And how obtuse he comes off.

Justin and Morneau were born into wealth and privilege. They have never had any experiences that resemble the rigours of what the average Canadian has endured. Painting Ford and Scheer as out-of-touch elitists when it is obvious that they have more in common with the average voter comes off as both stupid and ineffective.

And it's not like Justin's experience as a snowboard instructor has built a strong economy or anything.




Was it something he said?:

In the ad, the steelworkers rip Trudeau’s record, and urge support for the NDP:

“Why would we choose Justin Trudeau when he doesn’t choose us. There’s only one party that puts working-class people first — Jagmeet Singh and the NDP,”

(Sidebar: this Jagmeet Singh - “When asked about NDP members in N.B. joining Green Party, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says there is “false information” being presented, including number of defections, adds many things “need to be cleared up” and Green leader Elizabeth May must respond to those questions”. Way to inspire leadership there, Jag. If Canadians weren't forced to fund every party in this country, you would literally be a non-entity, as you are for this election.)

In an interview, United Steelworkers Executive Mark Rowlinson said didn’t hold back, criticizing the government on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the European Union trade deal, and Canada-US trade.

Trudeau was also slammed over his refusal to protect the pensions of workers:

“Our members, whether they are in the steel sector or other sectors, their pensions and their benefits are at risk if their companies should face insolvency. We think that is fundamentally unfair and disappointed that the government hasn’t done anything to address that issue.”

There will be no pipelines as long as Justin is in office:

Unbelievably, the Federal Government took no position on the case— it did not appear in court to either oppose or support the groups which want to stop the pipeline— or even to protect your investment.

Is there any doubt that this non-position is due to the fact that Trudeau is seeking the votes of both the for— and against— pipeline people?

**

Major oil companies have approved $50 billion of projects since last year that will not be economically viable if governments implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, think-tank Carbon Tracker said in a report published on Friday.

Yes, about that: 

Since there’s no way we can meet our looming target for 2030 that Trudeau agreed to when he signed the 2015 Paris climate deal — lowering Canada’s emissions to 30% below 2005 levels — the Liberals have started moving the goalposts closer to the target.

But it has nothing to do with what we’ve been told is the real problem — industrial emissions from man-made activities when burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) for energy.

What the Trudeau government is now starting to do is to include annual emission reductions from the amount of carbon dioxide stored in Canada’s forests, in calculating the country’s total annual emissions, which it hasn’t done before.

And:

This grand objective is predicated upon an assumption – that UN member-states, including high polluters such as China, the US, India, Brazil, Canada, Russia, Indonesia and Australia, which generate more than half the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, will somehow drive down their carbon pollution voluntarily and assiduously without any binding enforcement mechanism to measure and control CO2 emissions at any level from factory to state ...

So there's that. 


And:

Canada's Inter Pipeline Ltd rejected a C$12.4 billion ($9.37 billion) buyout offer from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing's CK Infrastructure Holdings Ltd <1038 .hk=""> in July, the Globe and Mail reported late on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the two companies.

Inter Pipeline had said previously that it had received a takeover bid in August without naming the buyer. It also said then it was not in talks to sell.

Shares of the company, which owns pipelines in Alberta and Saskatchewan as well as oil storage tanks in Canada and Europe, have risen about 16% since its August statement on the offer.