Prime minister Justin Trudeau needs to check the direction in which his mob is headed. It is very hard to get out front to lead them when you are headed in opposite directions. Seeing the directions and concerns of the Liberal Party of Canada at the Halifax gathering last weekend, Trudeau needs to reassess the makeup and direction and priorities of himself and his cabinet.
The truth is today that Liberal Party supporters are predominantly to the left of the political spectrum. They are also to the left of Justin Trudeau and his cabinet. While Trudeau has changed the party to try to prevent it from showing much organization and discipline, he has also made it harder to control. Environment minister Catherine McKenna and natural resources minister Jim Carr can talk the talk of their portfolios but the party knows them to be hypocrites when they support the twinning of the Texas owned Trans Mountain pipeline.
Trudeau needs to realize that next year it is not the elites around his office but the people in the electoral districts who will knock on doors with literature in hand. They are the people who made the breakthrough for Trudeau in 2015 and are needed to defend his less than perfect record in the 2019 federal election.
The prime minister might think that all he needs to do for the party is stand for a few selfies and talk sunny days but the party has shown its concern for where this country is going. The ones who came to Halifax want Pharmacare to match with Medicare. They want to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs to show the user that helping them is more important than penalizing them for addiction.
And it was the young liberals who brought forward reforms for those in sex work. Liberal forums have been hearing for more than fifty years of the need to decriminalize prostitution and to recognize the work of sex surrogates and sex workers as a critical outlet for societal needs.
But it is not the prime minister and his cabinet that should act as the naysayers to these proposals. They have to recognize that the need is to study and consider by a progressive and understanding society. Being conscious of the needs is the beginning.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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