Was it something he said and did?
Invariably:
The Atlantic Liberal caucus is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down as party leader.
Following an Atlantic Liberal caucus meeting the morning of Dec. 23, caucus chair Kody Blois wrote a letter to Trudeau, shared Sunday on social media by New Brunswick Liberal MP Wayne Long.
"The discussion this morning centred around the need for you to resign as the Leader of the Liberal Party and to urgently allow for a process to determine a new leader to replace you," wrote Blois to Trudeau.
"Our colleagues this morning expressed their deep personal affection for you, their pride in our work as a Liberal team, but also their deep concern that without a leadership change that progress will be lost under a Pierre Poilievre [led] government."
In an email to CBC News on Monday, Long said he released the letter "because it's a representation of the majority of our Atlantic caucus."
Aside from the cabinet ministers in the Atlantic caucus, "a clear majority of the other 18 of us feel he needs to step down," said Long.
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This is what Canadians voted for:
(Sidebar: and how!)
He. Is. Not. Going. Anywhere!Are you surprised? He’s not even talking to you. You — the public, the people, the voters, the men and women who thought that democracy entitled them to demand of their leader an accountability. He’s laughing at you.Suck it up, the worst is yet to come.In the last two days, as the dollar plunged, as the economic foundations shifted under our feet, as Donald Trump circled, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, was skulking, lurking, hiding.After scuttling through back doors Monday to escape the public gaze, Trudeau — who did not think it necessary to address Canadians after the bombshell resignation of his finance minister — popped up Monday evening to speak to the party faithful and tell them how he wakes up “every single day” to make the country better.But to the families who every single day struggle to do their best: he said nothing.Tuesday was another day of hiding from Canadians and staying out of sight, before appearing at a Liberal Christmas party.“We are the greatest,” said Trudeau on Tuesday night. And the Liberal crowd cheered. Of course they would: to the Liberals he is the greatest. To Trudeau, he is the greatest.And so this is where we are at: a prime minister hiding from Canadians and seeking succour and solace in the bosom of Liberal stalwarts who will give him the sympathy and the applause he so badly needs.That Trudeau can’t bring himself to face the general public perhaps shows the depth of this crisis more than anything; he’ll talk to the devoted, but Canadians are shunned and ignored.
Anyone with an ounce of self-reflection would realise that he has lost the confidence of his party and the country and would quietly bow out.
But that is not what narcissists like Justin do.
He will hold on, prorogue the government, inspire anti-Americanism, solicit foreign businessmen to fill his father's foundation's coffers, make breakable promises - whatever it takes to stay exactly where he is.
Where is our Lech Walesa?
This:
"Mr. prime minister," she calls out, causing Trudeau to turn around and approach her. After shaking hands, she adds, "Please get the f*ck out of BC. You suck."
Trudeau then turns around and walks away.
The Trump effect:
For a decade, we have been living in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “postnational” state. “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” Trudeau famously told the New York Times in 2015. “There are shared values — openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first postnational state.”Trudeau probably thought he was being profound, but he failed to grasp two things. First, those values are not shared by everyone. Second, on their own, they are not enough.Values need to be rooted in history. In Canada’s case that includes exploration, conquest, and overcoming the adversities of a vast, harsh landscape. But when you constantly denigrate that history as colonial, genocidal, and environmentally destructive, you contradict yourself.How could such a state be open, respectful or compassionate? What is there, then, to be proud of? Deconstruct a nation, and it does not hold. Instead, it becomes vulnerable.Trudeau’s predecessor understood this. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried to turn the tide by celebrating Canada’s military history but met resistance. His plans for celebrating the Battle of 1812, in which Canada defeated the Americans, were criticized for being too jingoistic and expensive. A nation of peacekeepers, presumably, should not glorify war.But Harper was prescient. He didn’t act because he saw Trump coming, but because he saw Trump’s foes, the “progressive” coalition of left-leaning post-nationalists, leading Canada down a dangerous path. Compassion was important, but so was patriotism, including honouring our history. Get the balance wrong, and you undermine national security.In the leaders’ debate on foreign policy in the 2015 election, Harper asked Trudeau, “Why would we not revoke the citizenship of people convicted of terrorist offences against this country?”“A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” Trudeau replied. “And you devalue the citizenship of every Canadian in this place and in this country when you break down and make it conditional for anyone.”At the time, voters cheered Trudeau’s response. Flash forward to 2024, and it’s hard to imagine anyone giving his answer.The world is a mess, and Canada is too. We have no common values, no red lines that cannot be crossed. Instead, our country has become ground zero for foreign grievances and interference. Synagogues and Jewish schools are shot up and firebombed by Hamas sympathizers. The Indian government stands accused of plotting an assassination in British Columbia. Sikhs beat up Hindus in the parking lot of their temple in Mississauga. The Chinese government runs police stations in Canada to terrorize its diaspora. And so on, and so on.We are not alone in this, of course: other western democracies are witnessing appalling acts of terror, including just last week at the German Christmas market in Magdeburg. National security is becoming job one as nations from Poland to Taiwan bolster their defences to deter potential invasions by the oligarchs next door. And now, unthinkably, Canada could be facing that same threat, from our southern neighbour.But there is hope. A Leger poll taken after Trump’s first “51st state” comment found that only 13 per cent of Canadians say that they would like Canada to become the 51st American state, while 82 per cent do not like the idea. The question now is: what would we do about it? If an American army marched on our border, would we take up arms, like the Ukrainians did when Moscow invaded? What would we be fighting for? What makes us Canadian?
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Ottawa prepared a $1.3 billion plan to bolster the border and crack down on transnational crime after Trump threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they don’t do more to tackle illegal migration and drug smuggling.
Who would make it nearly impossible to turf their leader?
“There isn't the mechanism in the Liberal Party that there is in the Conservative Party,” explained Turnbull.
“They availed themselves of the Reform Act and in not using that mechanism. (The Conservatives) ousted Erin O'Toole a few years ago and then had the leadership process that brought Pierre Poilievre in. But the Liberals didn't take advantage of that mechanism where the caucus can, with a 50-per-cent-plus-one vote, push the leader out, and then replace with an interim leader. And so, their options for actually pushing him out of the door are pretty limited.”
According to Turnbull, the resignation requests from within Trudeau's caucus, be they through the media or in back rooms, appears to be the adoption of a "death by a thousand cuts" approach ahead of an impending federal election.
Also - NO Liberal is a friend to women.
Why didn't anyone see that before?:
Wilson-Raybould did the right thing by eventually quitting the Liberal cabinet after it came out that she experienced pressure to violate her ethics as a lawyer in the prosecution of Quebec company SNC-Lavalin (now AtkinsRéalis). Trudeau later kicked her from the party.But this unfortunately now overshadows Wilson-Raybould’s more substantial record of weakening the justice system: she began the work of repealing mandatory minimum sentences; she made it easier for offenders to receive bail. She even expanded Gladue rules, which previously only allowed race-based sentencing discounts, to apply to bail decisions as well.The former justice minister’s bail reforms have widely been accused of letting crime run even more rampant in Canada — Edmonton police, Manitoba municipalities and even B.C.’s NDP attorney general have all made complaints.Philpott, former Liberal health minister who quit cabinet in solidarity with Wilson-Raybould (and was later ousted from the party by Trudeau), is little different. She simplified the law to get more drug consumption sites up and running, stripping away guardrails that once protected communities from attracting dangerous drug-related activity. Post-politics, she continues to push for more drug decriminalization and, as the dean of Queen’s University’s med school, has developed race-based admissions policies.
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The groping incident: At the height of the #MeToo movement, in 2018, an old newspaper editorial about a female journalist who alleged that Trudeau groped her resurfaced. The woman had been sent to interview the then 28-year-old Trudeau at the Kokanee Summit festival in B.C.; she ended up being the subject of an unsigned editorial that recounted Trudeau “groping” and “inappropriately handling” her instead. At the time, Trudeau apologized and did not ask for any corrections to her column.When the story resurfaced in 2018, Trudeau remained mum, before finally going with an “I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way. But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently.”This occurred in the context of Trudeau as our prime minister, a man who had declared himself a feminist, mandated that half of his cabinet consist of women and even dropped MPs like hot potatoes over similar accusations that he himself was facing. Writing for the Post in 2018, Joe Oliver recalled how Trudeau dealt with two Liberal MPs accused of inappropriate behaviour: “Without warning, the accused were booted from the Liberal caucus at an open meeting. They were not provided any information about the allegations against them, any chance to defend themselves.…”
Reframing women’s labour participation as his government’s feminist victory: In March of this year, Trudeau posted on X that “Since we started cutting child care fees down to $10 a day, women’s participation in our economy has reached an all-time high.” I suppose inflation, housing unaffordability, stagnant wages and the rising costs of food and energy have nothing to do with it, hmm? From where regular Canadians are standing, it’s obvious that families simply cannot survive on a single income. Women cannot afford to stay home with their children. Spare us the discourse about empowered women suddenly entering the labour market in droves, Trudeau. This was no feminist “win.”And finally, introducing the newest women — men: Trudeau’s government ushered in the era of gender self-identification in Canada with the assent of Bill C-16 in 2017. We now live in a country that prioritizes one’s inner gender feelings above another’s biological sex.Canadian women no longer enjoy the sex-based protections we had in 2016: we’ve lost our sports, rape shelters and private spaces. He betrayed every female within our borders by legislating the lie that males can simply declare themselves to be females. We now must fight to regain what women have lost.Trudeau was correct when he said last week that women’s progress is under attack everywhere. That includes Canada — and it is because of leaders like him.
The Liberals step up to the plate for the landmass (aside from China) they really care about:
The funding will go to Montreal’s Torngat Metals to undertake pre-development activities for building a 170-kilometre road in northern Quebec and Labrador, along with new port facilities on the Labrador coast, Ottawa announced in a news release on Dec. 20. Those activities will include engaging with indigenous communities, environmental reviews, and other planning and design work.
The project includes a 59-hectare single open pit mine located near Lac Brisson in Nunavik, and pre-feasibility and feasibility studies are expected to be completed by the end of 2025, with production slated to begin in 2028, says Torngat Metals.
China holds a near-monopoly on the production of rare earth elements, accounting for 70 percent of global mined production and 87 percent of global refined production in 2022, according to NRCan. Rare earth elements are a group of 17 metals essential to industrial and high-technology applications, including electronics, aerospace, automotive, and defence.
Another one of the Liberals' many failures:
A lack of money and staff as well as aging equipment were the cause of the problems, according the Departmental Results Report 2023-2024. “There is a risk that DND/CAF may have difficulty maintaining its materiel capabilities at the right level to support operations,” the report, released Dec. 17, pointed out.
The percentage of key naval fleets that are serviceable to meet training and readiness requirements in support of concurrent operations dropped from 51.2 per cent in 2022-2023 to 45.73 per cent in 2023-2024, according to the report. The target for the navy is this area is supposed to be at least 60 per cent.
For key army fleets that serviceability rate dropped from 56 per cent to 49 per cent during the same time frame. The target for the army in this area is supposed to be at least 80 per cent. Serviceability rates for air force fleets increased slightly but were also far off the target. Those rates went from 43.88 per cent in 2022-2023 to 48.9 per cent in 2023-2024. The target in the air force is supposed to be at least 85 per cent.
The report also lists what DND considered the three key risks associated with not having forces ready. Those include the overall lack of military personnel, the lack of specific skilled staff and the problems with maintenance.
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The current state of the CAF can be traced back to decisions made in the 1990s. Canada had been a defence laggard for years before then, but the 1994 White Paper on Defence, introduced by Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government, prioritized cost-cutting over capability. The CAF’s personnel numbers were slashed, historical regiments disbanded, and investments in modern equipment deferred.
Stephen Harper’s Conservative government made a number of significant equipment purchases—such as strategic airlift and heavy-lift helicopters—but did not initiate a new, comprehensive defence policy and was soon more focused on balancing the budget than rebuilding the CAF. More recently, the Trudeau government’s 2017 defence strategy, “Strong, Secure, Engaged,” made ambitious promises—including an increase in defence spending to 1.4 percent of GDP by 2024—but these commitments have largely gone unmet. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Canada’s defence expenditure remains at a mere 1.29 percent of GDP, far below NATO’s 2 percent benchmark.
Enjoy the decline:
The poll conducted by Ipsos reveals that 33 per cent plan to minimize spending and nearly half (46 per cent) of Canadians say the higher cost of living will affect their financial new year’s resolutions.Concerns about the cost of living (54 per cent), inflation (50 per cent), and a possible economic recession (42 per cent) are among the leading causes of financial anxiety. Others include concerns about overall financial situations, fear of unknown expenses, housing costs, family related expenses and keeping up with monthly bills, according to the BMO Real Financial Progress Index report.
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With 2025 showing no signs of relief, some charities have had to reduce how much food they can provide to those who need it the most.In Toronto, Daily Bread Food Bank saw hundreds of individuals this year who were previously giving $20 a month reduce that donation by about half because it’s all they can give.
The BC activist group that pushed for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2015 is now citing concerns with the state euthanasia program its members helped found.
The BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) has conceded MAiD has gone too far, and are calling for increased safeguards — while the Trudeau Liberals are looking to expand eligibility even further in 2027.
The BCCLA in 2015 filed Carter v. Canada, a challenge to the former Criminal Code law that made it illegal to be a party to someone’s death.
The Government of Canada before Christmas released the 2023 MAiD statistics, with state suicide deaths totalling 15,343 last year — up 15.8% from 2022. MAiD accounted for approximately one in 20 deaths in Canada in 2023.
We have been down this Liberal road before, when the Trudeau government required applicants for the Canada Summer Jobs Program to attest that they shared the government pro-abortion views. A policy that government benefits are only available to those who take the government line is illiberal in the extreme but true to form.
The second recommendation would be absolutely cataclysmic in its impact. Almost 40 per cent of Canada’s registered charities advance religion. The finance committee proposes to deny two out of every five charities their tax status. That would include the Salvation Army, which some of the committee MPs no doubt praise on their way in and out of supermarkets this season.
The committee proposes the obliteration of the charitable sector.
My colleagues at Cardus, keenly sensing that this absurdity was in the air, released a report last month on the socio-economic contribution of religious congregations. They have been measuring this for years.
Cardus calls it the “Halo Effect,” the dollar value of a congregation’s socio-economic contribution. For 64 Christian congregations in Canada, Cardus calculated that their Halo Effect is more than 10 times the value of the tax exemptions and credits, on average. The net-positive socio-economic contribution — Halo Effect, minus the value of tax exemptions and credits — of all religious congregations in Canada is an estimated $16.5 billion.
Even a high-spending government like the current one would find it difficult to find $16.5 billion per year to make up for lost social services, poverty alleviation and community-building.
Leftists often hate religion but love what religious people do. But what religious people do cannot be replaced. Sally Ann doesn’t stand for Secularist Atheists
As Jay Nordlinger wrote in “Carterpalooza,” “No one quite realizes just how passionately anti-Israel Carter is. William Safire has reported that Cyrus Vance acknowledged that, if he had had a second term, Carter would have sold Israel down the river. In the 1990s, Carter became quite close to Yasser Arafat. After the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia was mad at Arafat, because the PLO chief had sided with Saddam Hussein. So Arafat asked Carter to fly to Riyadh to smooth things over with the princes and restore Saudi funding to him — which Carter did…In The Unfinished Presidency, [Douglas] Brinkley writes, ‘There was no world leader Jimmy Carter was more eager to know than Yasir Arafat.’”
Chen Jinping, a 60-year-old U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty on Dec. 18 in front of U.S. District Judge Nina Morrison, a development that prosecutors lauded as the latest progress in countering the Chinese regime’s transnational repression scheme.Chen was one of two individuals the FBI arrested in April 2023 over the illegal police station, one of more than 100 identified overseas Chinese police outposts Beijing had operated globally.
He faces up to five years in prison.
China Coast Guard vessels have been spotted near the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands for a record 353 days this year, the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) said Sunday, as Beijing continues to ramp up its activities near the tiny islets that it also claims.As of midnight Monday, four China Coast Guard vessels had been confirmed inside the so-called contiguous zone just outside Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkakus, the JCG said.“The circumstances in the waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands remain severe and unpredictable,” Seishiro Sakamoto, director-general of the JCG's 11th regional headquarters, said a statement.
A parliamentary report is urging the Canadian government to confront the Chinese Communist Party's human rights abuses, recognize Taiwan’s international status, and support Tibetans' right to self-determination.
Blacklock's Reporter says the Commons Special Committee on Canada-China Relations released its most forceful recommendations to date, highlighting Beijing's mass persecution, forced labour practices, and suppression of minorities.
“Although witnesses were largely in favour of resuming diplomatic activity between Canada and the People’s Republic of China using a so-called pragmatic approach, as some witnesses noted and as this report shows, the fact remains serious high level discussions are needed regarding human rights abuses committed by China,” the committee wrote.
The report recommends that the Canadian government publicly acknowledge “Taiwan’s future must be determined peacefully and in accordance with the wishes of the Taiwanese people” and advocate for Taiwan’s inclusion in international organizations such as the World Health Organization.
Further recommendations include integrating human rights provisions into new trade agreements, promoting democratic values, and condemning China’s “mass imprisonment, torture and persecution of members of the Uyghur ethnic minority and other minorities.”
The report also calls for supporting Tibetans’ right to self-determination and denouncing China’s use of forced labor.
“It was necessary and relevant for the Special Committee to study Canada’s strategy in greater depth,” the MPs noted, requesting a formal cabinet response.
The Special Committee was established in December 2019 following a parliamentary vote that marked the first defeat of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government.
During the Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union of the 1930s a boy named Pavel Morozov became a national hero for denouncing his father and then allegedly being killed in revenge by relatives.
Morozov, known as Pavlik, was said to have informed on his own father for selling state documents to “bandits and enemies of the Soviet state”. The boy’s deeply mythologised story was used to encourage other Soviet bloc children to inform on their parents.
Almost a century later the practice of denunciation is undergoing a significant revival in President Putin’s Russia.
Last week a Russian anthropologist, a linguist and the BBC Russian Service announced that they had established the identity of a “serial snitch” who boasted of sending 1,357 denunciations between February and September 2023 alone, dispatching them to agencies such as the prosecutor general’s office, military prosecutors, the federal security service, the prison service and the justice ministry.
The snitch posed as a woman named Anna Korobkova, a patriot who especially revels in reporting people for “discrediting the use of the Russian armed forces” — a crime under a law approved by Putin after his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Alexandra Arkhipova, the anthropologist, began investigating “Korobkova” after the latter wrote to her employer, a university in Moscow, demanding that the anthropologist be sacked for referring to the “war” in Ukraine during a television appearance rather than using Putin’s euphemism, “special military operation”.
Arkhipova left Russia for France shortly afterwards. However, Korobkova boasted in November 2023 that six people had been fired from their jobs and 15 others issued administrative charges and fined as a result of “her” denunciations, which continue now.
“Merry Christmas” greeters have the firmest grip on tradition in Canada, according to a new poll.**
For most Canadians (62 per cent), Merry Christmas is the preferred way to greet others during the festive season. Just under one-in-four (24 per cent) go with the more secular “Happy Holidays,” while 14 per cent don’t care much either way, says Mario Canseco, president of B.C.-based Research Co.
In a letter home to Portuguese brethren, Jesuit missionary Pedro de Alcacova writes of singing a Mass to Japanese believers in 1552: "Our voices weren't good," he recalls, "still the Christian believers rejoiced."**
It was Christmas Eve in Yamaguchi, and the patience, if not faith, of the new Japanese converts may have been tested after dubious singing by nanban ("southern barbarian") missionaries turned into a scripture reading that ran deep into the night and resumed for another day with the "crow of the cock."
This was Japan's first Christmas on record, and in subtropical Yamaguchi, at the southern edge of Honshu, the celebration of the virgin birth was in a sense also a virgin encounter: It featured much surprised delight (the Jesuit account says) along with the first Western vocal music heard in Japan. Saint Francis Xavier — the Jesuit who brought Christianity to Asia — had landed in Japan's Satsuma domain only three years earlier, winning favor with daimyō lords and with it permission to seek converts. Japan was still decades away from the Christian persecutions ushered in by the seclusion policy of the Tokugawa shogunate — the backdrop of the great Shusaku Endo novel "Silence" recently adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese.
Mutual fascination — along with commercial and strategic interests — still featured highly. Regional daimyō invited missionaries home in order to learn about the West, and to lobby for advantageous trade, while Xavier sought friends in high places to help him win converts in lower ones. It was a period of remarkable and often cordial exchange for both sides, although even then street-side Jesuit preachers would be prone to spitting, jeers and pelting from passers-by.
The Christmas of 1552 could hardly have been more different from the Christmases we know today. Familiar Yuletide iconography — Christmas trees, reindeers, mistletoe and the like — was not yet established anywhere in the world (and, naturally, there was not a whiff of the commercialism that marks modern-day Christmas festivities.) The setting for this Christmas was the abandoned Daido-ji Buddhist temple, converted into the Jesuits' house of worship and living quarters. It would be among the first of Japan's nanban-dera, or southern barbarian temples, the name given to the makeshift Christian churches housed in Buddhist buildings, with shoji and engawa (a type of terrace) and, often the sole exterior visual difference, a cross erected upon the kawara roof tiles.
On Christmas Eve, Japanese believers were invited to spend the night in the Jesuit living quarters, cramming the venue as they embarked upon an all-nighter of hymns, sermons, scripture readings and Masses. For today's readers, at least, de Alcacova's account comes across as a rather gruelling experience, although there's no reason to doubt the missionary's numerous references to the "great joy" of the Japanese converts. From dusk until dawn, the new converts were treated to sermons and readings about "Deus" — the Portuguese word for God. The entire celebration contained no fewer than six Masses.
Father Juan Fernandez, an important Jesuit who wrote the West's first lexicon of Japanese, opened the midnight scripture sessions. When his voice grew weary, he was relieved by "a Japanese youth with knowledge of our language," de Alcacova writes. At the crack of dawn, Cosme de Torres — leader of the Jesuit mission after Xavier's departure for India — led a new Mass, while another priest read passages from the gospels and the Epistles. After this night of Christian immersion, the faithful were allowed to go home, likely exchanging greetings of "Natala" — the Portuguese word for Christmas, meaning "birth."
For the Christian, he said, this relic is a reminder of the promise of life. Aquinas is a saint who is now with God, destined to receive his body back at the Last Judgment. To kneel in the presence of his relic is therefore to connect with God in a special way. As he puts it, a natural devotion to this skull facilitates a supernatural devotion to God.
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