We Have Seen the Enemy And It Is Us

Governments are merely a symptom of the electorate that puts them into power.

Imagine what this electorate says of the country:

Cabinet last night put taxpayers back in the airline business for the first time since 1988. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland approved the purchase of $500 million in Air Canada shares after Parliament privatized the carrier 33 years ago: “We wanted a good deal, not just any deal.”

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The Liberal convention involved the usual self-congratulatory nonsense about a job well done, which wasn’t true, an endorsement by a former central banker promoting his new book, and not a single innovative idea as to how to pay for everything they want to give away in order to be re-elected.

I suppose you must have a convention if you planned one — even after your government is responsible for a vaccine procurement botch-up, for foreign policy mishaps, or for handing out billions indiscriminately during the pandemic. And, of course, you would do at that convention what you have always done, which is to read out a shopping list of giveaways, staggeringly expensive, without a single mention of wealth creation or where the money would come from.

What was missing was any mention about an increasingly serious problem of soaring house prices. According to OECD data, since 2000, prices in Canada have risen faster than in Britain, France and the U.S. and sit above the OECD average. ...

In a nutshell, the Liberal government is Canada’s biggest problem. The country is run by professional politicians who lack “domain expertise” beyond getting re-elected. Current placeholders lack credentials, experience, or talent to head the ministries they run, surprising in a country with so many educated and capable people.

The Canadian cabinet is devoid of representatives from the critically important sectors of oil and gas, mining, technology, manufacturing, agriculture, export, science, construction, engineering, retail or finance. It lacks anyone knowledgeable about economics, geopolitics, innovation, entrepreneurship, innovation, or future trends.

For instance, the Prime Minister of Canada was a teacher and snowboard instructor; the current finance minister is a journalist who’s also burdened with other portfolios; the health minister is a graphic designer; the procurement minister, a law professor; the foreign minister, an astronaut; the minister of natural resources, a self-described TV “personality”; the minister of agriculture, a campground proprietor and so on.

These people didn't just put themselves into power. They were voted it by people who give as much thought to the issues of the day as they do what brand of sweatpants they will wear outside when buying more Cheetos.

(Sidebar: are Cheetos essential?)

 

Frightened by words, the Canadian voter is like a squirrel whose only concern is hording acorns without hindrance.

It's no wonder they now have a government whose accountability is zero:

Who was going to bring Canada back, make her a respected and influential play in the councils of the world? That mask has faded entirely. When even a CNN reporter, Jake Tapper, rants about Canada’s shortcomings in managing the COVID crisis and securing vaccines.

And where is that vital open-faced and seemingly naïve actor who in the early days was talking of “charm offensives” and floating into international conferences with bright sock wear and an eager world press?

Time has done its work on that facade. What was once new is old again. I recall when Jean Chretien cancelled the inquiry into what was known as the Somali inquiry. The hard nosed reporters of that day remarked then, in a kind of rough praise, that “this was the old man” doing his street-fighter thing. The more things change the more they stay the same.