Often, it is:
In 2012, when Trudeau announced his run for the Liberal leadership, he spoke from his kitchen, wearing a T-shirt, offering a certain intimacy.
“When was the last time you had a leader you actually trusted?” Justin said. “And not just the nebulous ‘trust to govern competently,’ but actually trusted, the way you trust a friend to pick up your kids from school, or a neighbour to keep your extra front door key? Real trust?”
He offered to be our best friend. To pick up the kids after school. Over time, as Freeland and Wilson-Raybould would learn, that friendship was fake. Canadians gave him the front door key and he used it let himself in, hanging about, hectoring us and not taking the hint to leave.
It was the hectoring that grew most tiresome. For a determined secularist, he was brimming over with fire and brimstone for those not as enlightened as he. The constant virtue-signalling, the glib moral superiority, the disdain for other points of view — that was all a feature, not a bug. He knew better and didn’t hesitate in telling us so.
Those who opposed legal cannabis were hopelessly old-fashioned, not quite up to date with “because it’s 2015” thinking. Nevermind that the promenades of our great cities now reek of urine and pot.
Those who opposed medical-care-by-lethal-injection were dismissed as conjuring up slippery slopes and willing to let others suffer pain for their principles. The slippery slope turned out to be a cliff, but no matter, Trudeau was still at the edge, pushing the disabled, the distraught, the poor and the lonely to the edge.
Those who lacked his enthusiasm for China’s admirable dictatorship were wrong until the People’s Republic started kidnapping our people.
Those who opposed his carbon tax were irresponsible and reckless, until he himself decided to suspend it for (putative) electoral advantage.
Those who worried about surging immigration were racist. Those who opposed him on almost any issue were dismissed as racist, even though the man himself had a fancy for racist costumery.
He lectured the country, the churches — even the pope — on Indigenous affairs. He wore his Indigenous policy on his sleeve; actually had it tattooed on his arm. Then he went surfing on the Indigenous holiday he himself had created.
The country itself did not quite measure up, as Trudeau ceaselessly found fault with its history.
Everything revolved around him, and the population was being drawn into an ever-tighter embrace, the better for his superior character to rub off on us. It began as strange and ended as creepy. The nation’s skin began to crawl.
“He could effortlessly capture attention anywhere he went; he reveled in it, and consistently sought more,” wrote Stephen Maher, author of the Trudeau biography, The Prince. “It was, for instance, why he wore blackface on so many occasions that he could later not recall them all. He liked to dress up, be the centre of attention.”
And so he remained. Despite having lost the popular vote in both in 2019 and 2021, there was no humbling, no trimming, no reconsidering of whether the country would be better if it simply was more like him. Or the world for that matter. What was the Bollywood tour of India other than Trudeau’s confidence that he knew how to be a better Indian than his hosts?
The budget would balance itself, monetary policy would sort itself out, all from simply being in his presence. “Canada was back” on the world stage simply because he landed the lead role.
When things began to go wrong, it could not be his fault. His caucus did not appreciate him sufficiently, the nation lacked gratitude. His moral preening had long become mere posing and he alone did not notice.
**
Almost the entire Trudeau policy focus has been in three areas. There has been an insane exaggeration of what is actually known about climate change, leading to a self-destructive war on the oil and gas industries, and needless increases in the cost of living in pursuit of a will o’ the wisp of fossil fuel use. The government’s ambition for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is commendable but the $5.7 billion that has been pledged to reparations is excessive and much of it has been unwise, as well as unjustified. There is still no comprehensive policy to improve the lives of Indigenous people, but in its self-flagellating effusion, the regime accepted that Canada is a genocidal country alongside Nazi Germany, the Turks in Armenia, Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, and Rwanda. This is a blood libel on all English and French Canadians. And there has been a nonsensical obsession with matters of gender which has made us an international laughing stock and driven our most distinguished citizen, Jordan Peterson, out of the country. Everything is slathered in nauseating wokeism and the federal government has done absolutely nothing to protect the suppressed rights of English-speaking people in Quebec. Our Confederation is a shambles.
The Liberals are right to change leaders and I will assess their candidates when they have been identified. But what we should all aim at now is that as soon as this dubious prorogation of Parliament to late March to accommodate the convenience of the Liberal party ends, we should have the federal election. In these circumstances, waiting until October will be an unearned punishment of all Canadians. We have suffered enough.
**
The fight that Trudeau has shied away from is the contempt with which most Liberal Parliamentarians hold Trudeau. It is a contempt grounded in MPs finally realizing that he has thoroughly mucked up, so much so that our very nation is in danger.
Those MPs are embarrassed at being suckered in for so many years by his charm and his tall tales of success.
An open and transparent government? Reconciliation with Indigenous? Cutting emissions?
And no matter how often Trudeau boasted of great success over the years to Canadian media, and now with American media (watch him telling CNN’s Tapper this past week that Canada is in fabulous economic standing, and that the land is strong), people no longer believe a word he says – the world knows the truth.
**
What would Justin do without her?:
One figure moves with quiet influence in the wood-panelled corridors of Parliament Hill, where power lies.
It is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Chief of Staff Katie Telford.
Since 2015, Telford has shaped Canada's political landscape while repeatedly sidestepping full accountability for controversial decisions that have cost taxpayers millions and potentially compromised national security.
Consider the carefully crafted testimony Telford delivered on Chinese election interference.
It was a masterclass in strategic omission.
While acknowledging that Trudeau "quite possibly" received briefings about foreign meddling in 2022, she repeatedly hid behind the shield of "national security" constraints.
Telford's testimony left Canadians in the dark about potential threats to their democracy.
Her credibility suffered another blow when CSIS Director David Vigneault publicly contradicted her claims about a security assessment involving a Liberal MP.
Justin Trudeau’s underwhelming notice of resignation has rendered him a lame duck and the head of the government largely in name only. Now, the most unimpressive Liberal cabinet in history will claw, hiss, and scratch at each other for the honour of being prime minister for a couple of weeks or months, depending on how unlucky we get.
(Sidebar: and how! All of the usual suspects and especially the skeevy ones.)
**
A majority of Canadians support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to step down, yet his announcement this week has not changed the Liberal party’s fortunes, new polling suggests.
Eight in 10 (81 per cent) Canadians said they are in favour of Trudeau’s resignation, with more than half saying they “strongly approve” of it, according to an Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News and released on Wednesday.
When announcing his plans to step aside, Trudeau said that it has become clear to him that if he’s having to fight internal battles, he cannot be the best option in the upcoming election.
However, his decision to make way for a new leader has not moved the needle much for the Liberals’ prospects, with support for the party dropping by one point, down to 20 per cent, since similar polling was done in late December.
Among decided voters, support for the Liberals under Trudeau remains unchanged from Ipsos polling released on Dec. 20 that put the party at near-historic lows of 20 per cent.
Decided voter support for Conservatives was up two per cent this month to 46 per cent compared to 44 per cent in the Dec. 20 polling, while the NDP are now down to 17 per cent support among decided voters compared to being level with Liberals at 20 per cent last month.
(Sidebar: not even the walking fossil Chretien can boost support. This is bad for the Liberals.)
It's not like he can't or won't try again.
If Canadians are happy to censor even themselves, they only allow for some uninteresting despot to silence the lot of us:
By proroguing Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau snuffed the life out of one of his favourite darlings: Bill C-63, also known as the online harms act.
There’s no excuse for suspending democracy at a time like this, but we should at least celebrate the death of this atrocious bill. Had it (or the two bills the Liberals were to replace it with) passed, the Canadian Human Rights Commission would have been made sheriff of the Canadian internet, empowering it to drag anyone through a lengthy tribunal process making online comments perceived to be hateful. What’s worse, anyone reporting mean comments to this tribunal would be allowed to remain anonymous, which would have allowed the process to be weaponized with ease.
The bill would have also added “hate crime” to the Criminal Code, with a maximum penalty of life in prison — which is little consolation when the line between mean comments and criminal hatred was left dangerously vague. Further, it would have forced social media giants under the boot of a new digital safety bureaucracy, expanding government once more while creating more costs for outside firms operating in Canada.
Its death marks the end of an era in Canada. There will be no more internet-tampering legislation from the Liberals. This. Is. It. Stamp this in your calendar as the time when online freedom began its comeback.
Have the existing censorship bills been repealed?
No?
Also - do you remember this cow?:
As the Liberals deal with the fallout over Anthony Rota’s resignation as House Speaker, tensions are boiling over its attempt to strike Yaroslav Hunka’s recognition from the official record.
Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian who fought in a Nazi unit during the Second World War, was recognized by Rota as a “hero” during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Canada Sept. 22. ...
The idea to strike Hunka’s recognition from the official record of the House of Commons was proposed by Government House Leader Karina Gould on Monday.
**
A federal program paid researchers to document supposed links between the Conservative Party and German Nazis and other hate groups, Access To Information records show. Government House Leader Karina Gould, who launched the “Digital Citizen Initiative” in 2019 under the guise of internet fact checking, yesterday had no comment: “Sowing of discontent and distrust in elected political leaders and the political process has significantly impacted how Canadians understand themselves.”
**
A “fact-checking” program launched in 2019 by then-Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould paid researchers nearly $370,000 to discourage media and the public from questioning authority, Access To Information records show. Researchers stressed the importance of invoking Canadian values to avoid being seen as Liberal partisans: “Dissenting voices, in some cases even just one, can weaken the power of a normative belief.”
**
Cabinet used a costly “Digital Citizen Initiative” to fund partisan research at taxpayers’ expense, Access To Information records show. The Initiative launched by then-Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould polled Black people on whether they voted Liberal and hired Liberal publicists to monitor “anti-Liberal” media: “We decided to focus.”
Justin does what is comfortable for him - sows division by appealing to Canadians' innate anti-Americanism, the vile, phobic brand of sanctimony that has been decades in the making, so long that it is how Canadians separate themselves from their southern neighbours:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told CNN anchor Jake Tapper that President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated digs about Canada becoming the 51st state are a distraction from real issues in a short sit-down interview on Thursday.
“Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian,” said Trudeau. “One of the ways we define ourself most easily is, well, we’re not American.”
That's nice.
We're also not Fijian.
Imagine a country so bereft of imagination that it lets the village idiot explain to the American public that the sum of Canadian identity is"we're not you".
More:
For the vast majority of the country, this is a bridge too far. The past few weeks of backlash have revealed that Canadians remain convinced that we have a distinctive identity worth preserving, and that we are more than just an inclusive blank canvas—we are a nation, a people with our own history, culture, and virtues.
Recognizing that we do indeed have a unique national identity to fight for should spur Canadians to remember our forefathers who endowed us with many of the institutions, values, and heritage that make up this identity.
And what do we stand for as a "post-national state" with "no core values"?
Do explain without mentioning the mythical "free, universal healthcare" or the dubious political multiculturalism.
Trump has caught Canadians where they least want him to: in their own backyard.
Having no sense of self other than hating their more successful neighbours, what would the average Canadian fight for?
Is Canada's ruin all Justin's fault?
I mean - people did vote for an unaccomplished frat-boy who promised periods of debt.
In Justin's view, it IS the fault of the Canadian voter and not for the reasons one might think:
Instead of blaming his unpopularity on what’s being regularly reported in opinion polls for well over a year, Trudeau put the blame on “right-wing” ideological attacks and online disinformation campaigns.
“When you get an intersection of right-wight attacks and social media, you end up with a lot of disinformation,” Trudeau said. “Responsible governments have to stay focused on the policies that are making a difference, and that’s what we’ve been doing,”
What can one say?
That Justin has destroyed the economy of the second-largest country in the world? That he is a divisive, vain and inept @$$hole and is incapable of human feeling?
Nothing is ever his fault, apparently.
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