It seems Justin Trudeau missed a few lessons at his father’s knee. He must have been in the bathroom when Pierre Trudeau explained to his sons the reasons for a National Energy Policy. He also must have missed the lecture on why Canada had a Foreign Investment Review Agency. The young Trudeau was probably teaching school when the Conservatives quietly erased the National Energy Policy from the national memory and when diligent foreign investment review became a thing of the past. The younger Trudeau’s recent example of Consolidated Reports on Approved Policy (CRAP) in the National Post this week was not only stupid but an insult to his father’s memory.
Who would have believed that at a time when even Stephen Harper was reconsidering the wisdom of approving China’s national oil company CNOOC’s acquisition of Calgary-based Nexen, young Trudeau would ride up on his white horse, both pistols at the ready, and say the CNOOC-Nexen deal is good for Canada. And he goes on from there to prove that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.
Young Trudeau says that the CNOOC-Nexen deal will create middle-class Canadian jobs. Oh? How does this happen when you allow a foreign government to dictate the decisions of a multi-billion dollar international oil company? More important, he tells us, this will enable us to “broaden and deepen our relationship with the world’s second largest economy:” China. We already have one of those deep and broad relationships with the world’s largest economy: the United States of America. Maybe we should learn how to handle that relationship before we take on one that speaks Chinese.
Young Trudeau thinks we can sell the Chinese on our expertise in building cities. While I also love Toronto, he has obviously not tried to drive anywhere there recently.
Can you imagine young Trudeau telling us that Canada’s Conservatives are missing the boat with China because of the Harper government’s erratic approach and secretive behaviour? He just proved how little he knows about the erratic and secretive approach of the people in Bejing.
What Trudeau’s CRAP boils down to is blatant encouragement for Calgary Centre voters to vote Liberal next Monday. The naïveté of this attempt is laughable. Even if the western voters did elect a Liberal in that by-election, it would be because of the ongoing fight between the Wildrose Conservatives and the provincial Conservatives. There is no credit there for young Trudeau’s campaign.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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