Did you see the latest poll from Forum Research? While you might be skeptical of the polling technique and its findings, Justin Trudeau must be pleased with being number one. Frankly it is the type of poll that can create arrogance in a neophyte politician. And we all need to remember that the Liberal leader is still a newbie. His inexperience is showing and his gaffes are currently outweighing his successes.
Young Trudeau has put himself in a box in relation to piping Athabasca tar sands product. How can you approve TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline through the American Midwest and then reject Enbridge’s Northern Gateway across British Columbia? Does that mean we do not give a damn about the American environment but will protect our own? There are far too many environmentalists in the Liberal Party to accept that policy. Nor can we accept the lies involved in support of TransCanada’s Energy East or Enbridge’s Line 9 reversal.
And why Trudeau’s friend and key adviser Gerald Butts, former head of World Wildlife Fund, has not pulled him free of the trap is worrisome. It is leading us to examine his other choices and there is major concern growing.
Trudeau’s choice of David MacNaughton as Ontario co-chair of next year’s election campaign looks like an error. It is probably not as colossal an error as having a civil servant such as Dan Gagnier in the national co-chair role but is indicative of the problem.
The simple success of an organizer such as the late Senator Keith Davey was his ability to spend the day on the telephone and at the end of the day, in his tiny cramped handwriting, on one-page, was a picture of the national attitude. Keith was the most effective conduit for feedback that any politician could ever ask for.
Many of Trudeau’s team appear to have come from the leadership club and not enough have worked their way there through the ranks. Some have never been there. There seems to be little understanding or communication by this group into the grass roots of the Liberal Party. Trudeau has to learn that before you drive a train anywhere, you had better lay some rails.
So far, Trudeau and his Ontario guy, David MacNaughton, have screwed up the by-election in Trinity-Spadina. Nobody is interested in their edicts about who will be the candidate after Trudeau rashly promised an open nomination process for the party. That promise was too important to many key Liberal Party organizers.
Justin Trudeau might think he is omnipotent but that brain trust around him is not!
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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