Conservative leader Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer was not out to look cheap the other day. It was just the effect when he again announced that the conservatives would guarantee Canada’s health care system a three per cent increase per year. It seems that the Trudeau government made a deal recently to go up four per cent next year.
From Chuckles point of view, it was a waste of a good story about our health care and his mother’s kidney transplant. Politicians do not get many opportunities for personal stories to fit in with major announcements. His mother was martyred for the cause and the son was made to look cheap. And the last thing any politician wants is pity.
There was also a strong sense of déjà vu last week, as our prime minister headed to the far north to kick off his election campaign. It was just four years ago when prime minister Stephen Harper headed for Iqaluit, Nunavut, to kick off conservative Leona Aglukkaq’s bid for re-election. This is despite it still being the dog days of summer and nobody was really interested in politics.
But Justin Trudeau is not just a one-trick pony. He came north to help save the environment and protect the wild life. He came north to enlist the Inuit in the cause. In agreement with the Inuit, he announced that two large marine areas are being set aside as protected habitats of northern wildlife. (Only the Inuit can fish and hunt there.)
It is also an opportunity to show Canadians the changing climate of the north. This is the front-line of the war against climate change and the locals are already seeing the drastic affects. Melting permafrost, and disappearing ice shelves are changing the face of the north faster than people to the south realize.
While some see the changing environment of the Arctic as an opportunity to benefit from a year-round North-West Passage, the reality is that the extensive ice melt will have other drastic affects on our coastal cities and low-lying islands.
There is also no question but climate change is high on the lists of concerns of Canadians in this election. It is very hard to argue against there being any degree of climate change when fires are ravaging our forests, centuries-old ice fields are melting and changes are affecting our weather from an expanded tornado season to record breaking heat across Europe.
So, we will have to give Justin Trudeau and his organizers some credit here: They kicked off the election campaign with style and set the challenge for the climate-change deniers. It is going to be a rough and tumble campaign. (And by the way, Leona Aglukkaq lost the election four years ago. We hear, conservative leader Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer has already appointed her to run again.)
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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