In the roll-out of Justin Trudeau’s recent interview with Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star, he complains about what he calls ‘casual cynicism.’ He says it comes from the left wing of Canadian politics. He said, it bugged him during his first four years in office. Being a charter member of the progressive left in politics, that whine from Justin pisses me off. We are hardly the only cynics.
It is hard to imagine anything more cynical than promising Canadians that 2015 would be the last time they would use first-past-the-post voting. Justin gave the job of making that happen to one of the least competent and less experienced members of his cabinet. His party failed to open the examination and debate on voting systems to all Canadians. And the ‘do nothing’ conclusion was pre-ordained by the closed minds in the major parties.
And in 2016, where did our elitist prime minister and his family spend Christmas? When you take your family to spend Christmas with one of the richest men in the world on his private island in the Bahamas, it does raise a few eyebrows. And as Iman of the world’s Ismaili Muslims, the Aga Khan was unlikely to have had a Christmas tree for the kids.
You tell me what was going on in 2018 that detracted from Justin’s accomplishments? We were watching a self-identified feminist prove that he neither understood women nor left them to do their job. We all went through the Jody Wilson Raybould episode when she was justice minister. How was any accomplishment going to compete with that?
And for this progressive, the nadir of Justin’s first four years was his cynical purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Why he would waste billions of the taxpayers’ dollars on that one project is the extremis. That self-declared environmentalist has done nothing to help save this planet but make foolish promises of meeting some unlikely targets in the distant future.
Surprisingly, this cynical progressive was pleased with one aspect of the Trudeau government from 2015 to 2019. He was not Stephen Harper. In that we had something to appreciate.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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