A quick follow-up to our article on Volkswagen's recently announced E.V. battery “gigafactory” slated to be built in St. Thomas, Ontario. Despite the extreme cost -- $13.8 billion in Canadian taxpayer dollars, almost three times the average annual cost of all government aid for all corporations across Canada -- this is being sold as a big win for the Trudeau government, because of the thousands of jobs it's supposed to bring in to that not-exactly-thriving area. But it has already started to cause headaches as well.
The Toronto Starreports that as news of Volkswagen's sweetheart deal made its way through the industry, other companies started to wonder why Justin hadn't worked so hard to woo them too. Stellanis -- which owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Fiat -- has begun threatening to pull out of their recently announced E.V. plant in Windsor, Ontario, if they don't get their own Volkswagen-style subsidies, and quick. In that case, they'll just head south of the border, where Biden's recently signed (and atrociously misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act promises more subsidies than they'd ever thought possible back when their original Ontario deal was signed.
Now Ottawa and Ontario have begun publicly bickering over how best to handle this, with Ontario premier Doug Ford (ostensibly a conservative, remember) saying,
“We need the federal government to step up as they did for Volkswagen,” said Ford, noting Queen’s Park gave Stellantis and VW $500 million apiece in provincial aid. "[Ontario] signed a deal with Stellantis… quite some time ago on infrastructure and we gave them the exact same amount as we gave Volkswagen, and we need the federal government to come to the table and show their support like they have all along,” he said, stressing Trudeau’s government has been “great partners” on numerous auto deals.
Ford's groveling tone notwithstanding, the Trudeau government is annoyed at being called out in such a manner:
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters Monday she is “absolutely confident” the federal government will reach a deal with Stellantis, but she wants the provincial government to do more. “I also want to point out that the resources of the federal government are not infinite. And we are counting on Ontario to do its fair share. And we’re counting on Stellantis to be reasonable,” she added.
Not made of money, eh?
It is perhaps worth pointing out to Ms. Freeland here that her We're Not Made of Money argument is less convincing when she and her colleagues have spent the past few weeks telling everyone who will listen about the the nearly $14 billion check they just wrote for VW.
In any event, the Star further reports that "provincial and federal officials have been locked in crisis talks for days aimed at clearing the impasse," and that it is looking like Ontario will end up kicking in a bit more money to keep Stellantis happy. Whether the feds will follows suit is uncertain, but it seems likely. In their editorial on the Volkswagen plant, the Toronto Sun said the following:
[T]his is the future of so-called clean energy technology across Canada — massive public subsidies paid for by federal and provincial taxpayers to compete with the U.S. for as long as Biden’s legislation remains in place in America.
Barely one month later and that's already being proved exactly right. What's more, those same taxpayers will ultimately be required to pay more money for the cars these factories produce. Which is a perfect illustration of the bizarre economics of Electric Vehicles -- the consumers are forced to pay for both the factories and what they produce. They lose out on both sides of the equation.
Property Rights? Not in Canada
A few years back, my wife and I were staying at a family-run country inn for a couple of weeks of R&R in the Thousand Islands, a magnet for summer visitors from around the world. Sitting on our balcony, we observed a group of Chinese tourists filing out of a tour bus, several of whom, carrying packed lunches, negotiated the rock perimeter that separated the establishment from the road, strolled across the carefully tended lawn, entered our landlady’s garden gazebo, and made themselves at home.
They proceeded to spread their lunches across the table and fell to amidst convivial chatter, oblivious to the fact that they were on clearly marked private property. Somewhat taken aback, it slowly dawned on us that they had no sense of private property, no awareness that such a concept even existed—the collectivist mindset in a nutshell, or in a gazebo. The inn’s grounds and gardens were, apparently, held in common by the people, to be enjoyed at no expense of personal investment and maintenance.
All your stuff belongs to us.
Ownership of property, as John Locke famously argued in The Second Treatise of Government, which establishes the legitimacy of “original appropriation” and rightful exclusion, is the keystone of the democratic state and the very foundation of personal liberty. Our visitors were plainly strangers to the idea, having been educated and domesticated in a totalitarian nation. What is one to make, then, of a high-placed public official in a liberal democracy who plainly shares an equivalent sensibility?
Responding to questions concerning Bill C-19, currently in its second reading before the Senate, Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti recently claimed that “You don’t have an absolute right to own private property in Canada.” Among a series of other repressive measures, such as new luxury taxes and Climate Action Incentive payments, the bill would allow the government “to seize and cause the forfeiture and disposal of assets held by sanctioned people and entities, to support Canada’s participation in the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task force in light of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
The problem is not only that the bill may be in violation of international law. The problem is that the bill can be readily weaponized by the government at any time against its own citizens, thereby stealing their property via a form of nationally-implemented eminent domain, exercised arbitrarily over every facet of citizens’ lives. We can’t say we weren’t warned. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out that, without safeguards and a sense of “civic virtue,” democracies were prone to elevate tyrannical rulers intent on “penetrating into private life.”
Democracy in Canada is no different. Knowing the authoritarian proclivities of the Tyrant on the Hill, as prime minister Justin Trudeau is colloquially called, it’s a safe bet that the concept of a private self, and of the belief in personal property which anchors it, are not especially cherished by our Dear Leader, except insofar as it applies to him. Trudeau is more than capable of initiating Canada’s “illegal invasion” of his own country. His justice minister has merely expressed the prime minister’s deepest sentiments and controlling agenda.
Told ya.
Such perfectly demagogic statements uttered by the justice minister also perfectly encapsulate the state of affairs in what can no longer be considered a democratic nation. We may “have no absolute right to own private property,” which can be expropriated whenever the government desires, but the outright theft and suppression of citizens’ rights do not stop there.
As Canada’s draconian Covid legislation and coercive vaccination policies ensured, we have no absolute right over our own bodies, a most intimate form of private property—Naomi Wolf’s The Bodies of Others is a must-read in this respect, especially as it pertains to Canada. We also have no absolute right over our own opinions, which can be whimsically banned under Bill C-36 that would legislate against “hate speech,” as conveniently defined by the authorities. We have no absolute right to our bank accounts and financial assets, once regarded as an inalienable form of private property, which can be illegally frozen at the government’s discretion, as occurred in the aftermath of the Truckers Convoy. We have no absolute right to our Charter freedoms, which, as we have learned to our cost, can be ignored or suspended at will.
Parliament itself has become something of a joke, acting as a pedigreed club in which substantive issues affecting the lives and livelihoods of citizens will not be seriously discussed. It appears that we have no absolute right through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to examine dodgy and controversial government documents and orders leveraged against citizens, which are increasingly sequestered under the chevron of confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege. Senator Claude Carignan unavailingly chided the evasive and supercilious deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland in special committee treating of the Emergencies Act, frivolously invoked to suppress the Truckers’ anti-vaccine protest: “We need information and documents, not a figure skating show.”
As Rex Murphy pungently quipped in a National Post column, “Granted the committee investigating the use of the Emergencies Act is only about piddling, trivial matters: Civil Liberties. Bank Accounts frozen. Arson alleged. Property seized. Police jamming the streets. Jail without bail.” The parliamentary exchange, he continues, “is proof of how far [our leaders] have drifted from the feelings and understandings of ordinary people”—though I would add it is also evidence of how far our leaders have strayed from the basic presuppositions and principles that ground the existence of a parliamentary democracy. We have no “absolute right” to expect fairness, honor or constitutional responsibility from our elected representatives.
Freeland: all your stuff belongs to us, eh?
One recalls the catchphrase adopted in essence by Claus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) planning the New World Order, envisioned as the Great Reset: “You will own nothing and you will be happy.” The first part of the statement is true, the second part not so much. More to the point, the oligarchs, technocrats, plutocrats and directors of the administrative state promoting the Great Reset will own everything and they will be exceedingly happy. We know that Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland are graduates of Schwab’s Young Leaders training programs, and are fully on board with the WEF’s globalist project to remake the world in the interests of a powerful and unaccountable elite. Our absolute rights are now the government’s absolute prerogatives.
It is as if we are watching Justin Trudeau, his cabinet and his caucus strolling across our property, entering our gazebo, and spreading their lunch across the table. The irony is that we, who once assumed that we were guaranteed property rights to our dwellings, our bodies, our opinions, our bank accounts, our need for information, and our Charter and Constitutional provisions—now watch helplessly as the political tourists who roam in and out of public office in this country are now the de facto proprietors of our legal and legitimate possessions. The experiment in confiscatory policy is occurring before our eyes as our very lives are inexorably subject to official annexation. It appears that David Lametti was correct. Indeed, we have no absolute right to anything and Canada has become the world’s shining example of the greatest act of larceny in the history of the democratic state.
Canada: Fascist or Communist?
The lifting of the Emergencies Act is an enormous relief to all liberty-loving Canadians, but the fact that it could have been invoked on demonstrably flimsy grounds—for a peaceful protest in which no violence or property damage occurred—demonstrates the lawless lengths the Justin Trudeau government will go to secure total power. Perhaps the Act was a test to gauge the reaction of Canadians, many of whom accepted it supinely. Perhaps it was withdrawn because it appeared set to be revoked by the Senate. According to No More Lockdowns Canada, the reason may have had something to do with “an abrupt loss of institutional confidence in the banking system.”
Whatever the case, the willingness to suspend peaceful citizens’ liberties so harshly demonstrates the autocratic impulses of the ruling party. In innumerable articles, blogs and podcasts I’ve consulted over the last few turbulent weeks, the government has been variously described as fascist or communist. The terms are used interchangeably. An acquaintance recently asked which would be the proper designation.
The red queen.
As Mussolini wrote in The Doctrine of Fascism, “The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions.” Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s recent directives under the Emergencies Act were wholly fascist in nature, to wit:
First: we are broadening the scope of Canada’s anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes cover all forms of transactions, including digital assets such as cryptocurrencies. Second: the government is issuing an order with immediate effect, under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations.
Obviously, the freezing of bank accounts would proceed without a court order. The corporations and financial and social institutions seem eager to comply. The definition of “illegal,” of course, is moot, a tyrannical expedient.
Canada has also adopted the top-down, social credit and contact tracing system practiced by Communist China, a country it is rapidly coming to resemble. Justin Trudeau made no secret of his admiration for the Chinese “basic dictatorship”: “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.” Indeed, Trudeau invited the Chinese military to train in Canada. (The site chosen for cold-weather maneuvers was Petawawa, Ontario.) Fascist Venezuela and communist Cuba are also major influences and templates.
Which is it, then, fascist or communist? The answer is both, for the distinction is fundamentally irrelevant. Both are totalitarian entities, defined as systems of government that are centralized and autocratic and that demand total subservience to the state—hence “totalitarian.” Jonah Goldberg made the point eloquently in his Liberal Fascism. There is no paradox. As Paul Gottfried writes in Fascism: The Career of a Concept, “Totalitarianism is defined as a twentieth-century problem that is illustrated most dramatically by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia…Hitler and Stalin were not ideological opposites but similar dangers to human freedom.”
Besties.
If there is a difference between the two totalitarian ideologies, it pertains to the relation between state and corporation: the communist system is a sealed unit in which state and corporation are one and the same; the fascist system uses the corporation as a semi-independent institution to be manipulated and controlled. Between one and the other falls the shadow of not much.
The issue of whether Canada in its current manifestation is fascist or communist is therefore immaterial. It is both, owing to the habitual governing practice of the Trudeaus. Invoking the War Measures Act to deal with national emergencies that are not national emergencies seems to run in the Trudeau family. During the 1970 “October Crisis,” Trudeau père applied the measure to disable, as Nationalist Passions puts it, “an informal group, organized in small, autonomous cells [that] had no more than thirty-five members.” In 2022, Trudeau fils invoked the successor Emergencies Act to crush a peaceful trucker convoy protest and shut down banking privileges of both protestors and those who contributed to the trucker fund, retroactively made illegal.
“Getting rid of troublemakers en masse,” Gottlieb writes, “would help to advance the common project imposed by the leader,” consisting of control over the economy and public life, “a monopoly over all forms of communication” (Cf. Bill C-10), and the crushing of political dissent and fractious minorities. Sound familiar? What we are witnessing is a dynasty on the make and a country on the skids.
Père Pierre?
The Emergencies Act may have ben revoked, but the federal Covid mandates and restrictions, which the Freedom Convoy originally protested, are still on the books. Moreover, the truckers have lost their licences and operating insurance and many have lost their rigs. Their livelihoods have been destroyed. Some continue to languish in jail without bail. These are the wages of a peaceful protest that broke no laws, despite the misinformation and disinformation that is Justin Trudeau’s stock-in-trade.
We should not, then, be distracted by irrelevant distinctions and scholarly niceties. Whether the government is fascist or communist is moot. Under the current administration, a working coalition between two far-left parties, the Liberals and the enclitic NDP, Canada bears all the hallmarks of a repressive, oligopolist state that is laboring to permanently entrench itself. The Trudeaus have seen to that. Canadians have elected them on multiple occasions and, with the exception of those whose minds have not dimmed—a minority, be it said—Canadians have reaped the country they deserve. Mutatis mutandis, we now live under the boot of a communofascist regime and, barring some unforeseen change, we will all suffer for it.
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?
So now the mask slips and the truth is revealed: it was never about masks, or Covid, or "the science" at all. It was always—and always will be—about power. The Long March through the Institutions, the hallmark of the Frankfurt School's assault on the Western democracies, has now claimed its latest and thus far biggest prize.
Who had the collapse of Canada as a functioning democracy on his bingo card? It was disheartening enough when Australia (with a "conservative" prime minister) fell, and that disarmed and benighted nation quickly transformed from the land of Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee back into the British penal colony it always was.
But Canada? Granted, what became in 1867 the Dominion of Canada was comprised in part by American loyalists who rejected the separation from the motherland in the late 18th century and moved northward. Canadians also rightfully resented American incursions into their territory during the War of 1812 (a war much celebrated in Canada and totally ignored in the United States as the embarrassing mess it was). But since then, Canada has been America's closest ally. Canadians have long distinguished themselves in war, especially during World War I, where their service at Passchendaele, Ypres, and the Somme has become the stuff of military legend. Until the pestiferous arrival of Justin Trudeau as prime minister, no two countries were closer or had a more amicable relationship than Canada and the U.S.
Who is that masked man, really?
Now, in the blink of an eye, that relationship has been imperiled by Trudeau's abrogation of representative, parliamentary democracy via his mini-Machtergreifunglast week. In this outrageous and disgraceful action he has been aided and abetted by his deputy prime minister (and finance minister) Chrystia Freeland (Harvard, Rhodes scholar), whose journalist grandfather was reportedly a Nazi collaborator during the war. Coincidentally she is married to a reporter for the New York Times, and is a former journalist herself. Of Ukrainian descent on her mother's side, the steely, multi-lingual Freeland has emerged as She Who Brings Down the Hammer:
This is about following the money. This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades. We are today serving notice: if your truck is being used in these protests, your corporate accounts will be frozen. pic.twitter.com/AJ73zdDMy5
In her remarks following Trudeau's act of nation-destroying pique, she said this:
Around the world, liberal democracies have been facing serious and sustained threats. We may have thought – we may have hoped – that Canada would be spared. Over the past two and a half weeks, we have learned that it is not. This occupation and these blockades are causing serious harm to our economy, to our democratic institutions, and to Canada’s international standing... That is why our government is taking action. We are resolute and determined. These illegal blockades must and will end. What we are facing today is a threat to our democratic institutions, to our economy, and to peace, order, and good government in Canada. This is unacceptable. It cannot stand and it will not stand.
"Our democracy," indeed. A dedicated leftist, Freeland is a member of the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum, the most dangerous threat to real democracy and freedom in the world today. Led by Klaus Schwab, whose Strangelovian accent would make Laurence Olivier's demented dentist Dr. Szell blush, the WEF is the force behind the Great Reset, a cross between the dystopian visions of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World as run by Daddy Warbucks and Dr. Evil.
Like SPECTRE, Schwab and his Resetters (whose numbers include, of course, Britain's Prince Charles, the scion of a family of anglicized Germans who trace their lineage back to the houses of Hanover and Saxe-Coburg und Gotha), seek nothing less than global power and influence—and in fact have already achieved it:
“So we penetrate the cabinets”.
Here is Klaus Schwab in 2017 discussing how the WEF have penetrated governments with its young global leaders - like Justin Trudeau.pic.twitter.com/07M6LDPHot
The punitive reaction to the Freedom Convoy was only unexpected in its timing. While most Western governments have been relatively silent regarding Trudeau's sudden coup, the media has generally cheered, reflecting their Ivy League loathing of the working classes and their lip service to republican democracy. Just as they celebrated the fiery, "mostly peaceful" BLM and Antifa riots during the summer of 2020, so they've (baselessly, to use one of their favorite words) depicted the truckers as racists and Nazis, taking their cues in that regard from Trudeau himself.
Protests aren’t emergencies, and Western leaders had better get used to handling civil disobedience firmly without traducing civil liberties. Mr. Trudeau criminalized a protest movement, deputizing financial institutions, without due process or liability, to find and freeze personal accounts of blockaders and anyone who helps them. These extraordinary measures are a needless abuse of power.
When the Emergencies Act was first passed, critics were assured “emergency powers can only be used when the situation is so drastic that no other law of Canada can deal with the situation.” In abusing these powers for a nonemergency, Mr. Trudeau crossed a democratic line. Canadians wanted the blockades to end, but it never should have come at the expense of the rule of law.
Amazingly, and to its credit, so did the editorial board of the New York Times, meekly defending the right of peaceful protest, something Trudeau, Jr., had once claimed to champion:
We disagree with the protesters’ cause, but they have a right to be noisy and even disruptive. Protests are a necessary form of expression in a democratic society, particularly for those whose opinions do not command broad popular support. Governments have a responsibility to prevent violence by protesters, but they must be willing to accept some degree of disruption by those seeking to be heard. The challenge for public officials — the same one faced by Minneapolis and other cities in 2020 during the protests after the murder of George Floyd — is to maintain a balance between public health and safety and a functioning society, with the right to free expression. Entertaining the use of force to disperse or contain legal protests is wrong. As Mr. Trudeau said in November 2020, in expressing his support of a yearlong protest by farmers in India that blocked major highways to New Delhi, “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest.”
One of the obstacles to understanding the malign intentions of the Davoisie and its fellow travelers in this mésalliance of corporate leaders and government officials—one of the textbook characteristics of Fascism, along with the employment of private militias to subvert the democratic process—is the highly successful campaign the international Left has waged since the collapse of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact under exigent circumstances in 1941, mostly via the media, to convince you that National Socialist Germany and the international Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were somehow antithetical, when in fact they were two sides of the same hellish coin. The nickname "Nazi" (almost never used by the members of the NSDAP themselves) derives from the first two syllables of the German word for "national," and was used to distinguish National Socialists from the "Sozis" in common parlance.
Today, the bonzes of the WEF hide behind their ostensible capitalism and stupefying wealth to deflect any notion that they are aligned and allied with the international Left: how can we be both pro-capitalist and pro-communist at the same time? (Maybe they should ask Davos regular and former Nazi collaborator, George Soros.)
The sad and sobering part is that some two-thirds of Canadians approve of the Trudeau government's curtailment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees freedom of conscience and religion; freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; freedom of peaceful assembly; and freedom of association. But as in Britain, Ireland, Australia, and the U.S. Canada's major media are strongly pro-government (as long as that government tilts left) and will not brook any opposition to their love of internationalism. If that means rights have to be shelved "for a limited time," well you know the old saw about omelets and eggs. It only took two years to end "two weeks to flatten the curve."
As Ahab says in the passage quoted above, from Chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck," of Moby Dick: "If man will strike, strike through the dumb mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?"
How indeed? Especially when the wall strikes back.
As Canada Goes Green, Canada Goes Broke
It’s no longer news that the Liberal government of Canada under Justin Trudeau and his “social justice” cronies Gerald Butts and Chrystia Freeland have pulled out the stops in an effort to destroy the major source of Canada’s energy sector, the oil-gas-pipeline industry in the province of Alberta.
The oil sands have effectively become a dead letter. Every pipeline project has been quashed and energy companies have decamped for sunnier climes. The decline in Alberta’s GDP is pegged at 11.3 per cent. Unemployment and under-employment are rampant. The Alberta secession movement has acquired momentum and a political party, Wexit Canada, rebadged as the Maverick Party, has been formed—although the province’s Conservative premier Jason Kenney remains a staunch federalist and majority sentiment remains “loyalist.”
What Canadians do not seem to understand is that as Alberta goes, so goes Canada. For more than 50 years Alberta, Canada’s energy producing breadbasket, has been a major net contributor to the rest of the nation via the Equalization Formula in which “have” provinces subsidize their “have not” counterparts.
As Canada under the Liberal administration has now become a heavily indebted “have not” country, Alberta was its last remaining mainstay—until Alberta itself imploded thanks to the energy crushing policies of the federal government. It is now a “have not” province.
Indeed, as Canada goes Green, Canada goes broke, forcing it to increase its debt load and enact burdensome domestic programs that will impoverish its citizens and devastate the productive classes. At a steadily approaching inflexion point, Canada will face the spectre of default—a time-honored South American prospect.
In an article for the National Post, former Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis shows why she would have been a far better choice for the Conservative nomination than the waffly, Andrew Scheer-like Erin O’Toole. Lewis reveals how the new creeping socialism operates, confiscating not our property but our wealth via various levies like a home equity tax, a ubiquitous carbon tax, a new tax on the private sale of homes costing home owners a portion of their retirement savings, and a “perpetual debt scheme reminiscent of Argentina.”
What is taking place, she warns, is “a quiet and bloodless revolution that seeks to control our lives through economic dependency.” Conrad Black believes “the government… has lost its mind”—though more likely it is acting quite deliberately, in full knowledge and intent, cleverly pursuing a soft totalitarian agenda. Meanwhile, most Canadians linger in a condition of blissful oblivion as the country they believe is theirs and continue to be proud of is being insidiously stolen from them before their very eyes.
Regardless, Canadians on the whole believe in big government and continue to vote left, ensuring that Trudeau’s Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP) helmed by Jagmeet Singh will likely retain control of parliamentary business and national policy. A recent Angus Reid poll indicates that nearly 60 percent of Canadian women would vote today for either the Liberals or the NDP under these two leaders. Such are the wages of feminism.
Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces—aka the “Laurentian Elite”—trend massively socialist, as do the major conurbations like Halifax, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. There can be no doubt that socialism is the name of the game. Trudeau has boasted that China’s “basic dictatorship” is his favorite political system and, as Spencer Fernando writes, is far too week to stand up to Chinese Communist pressure.
Trudeau, we recall, lamented the passing of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, “join[ing] the people of Cuba in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.” Similarly, Jagmeet Singh had this to say: “He saw a country wracked by poverty, illiteracy & disease. So he lead [sic] a revolution that uplifted the lives of millions. RIP #Fidel Castro.”
Trudeau’s approval rating has taken a hit of late but carrots count in moving the dray electorate forward. A new Angus Reid poll indicates where his strength lies province by province. Many Canadians are happy to allow the government to borrow hundreds of millions to subsidize their idleness with a monetary COVID response package, dubbed CERB (Canada Emergency Response Benefit), recently increased by 20 percent, rendering it difficult for many entrepreneurs and businesses to hire service personnel who relish living off the government dole.
Nevertheless, despite his many false promises, numerous scandals, proroguing of parliament for several months on the pretext of mitigating COVID, fiscal incontinence, 600 million dollar media bribe (sugar-coated as a “bailout”), and overall economic witlessness (“the budget will balance itself”), Trudeau’s carrots to select beneficiaries enable him to retain a considerable voting constituency and markedly improve his chances of re-election.
Indeed, The Liberal Party can count on an ample war chest. A recent special report here at The Pipeline demonstrated that, of the top ten third-party spenders that influenced the previous election, eight of them were leftist groups, outspending their rivals on the right by a factor of over 15 to 1. The CBC poll tracker indicates that the Conservatives are currently trailing the Liberals by 5 percentage points but, as the propaganda arm of the Liberals and favorite son Trudeau, its results should be met with a degree of skepticism.
Nonetheless, the Conservatives are likely no match for the combined electoral clout of the Left in this country. The cash-strapped, media bête noire, the People’s Party of Canada, is the best option for Canada’s (and Alberta’s) future, but it may not garner a single parliamentary seat—as was the case in the last election. This is to be expected. The Liberals may form a minority government once again, but with the NDP hitching a ride it would in any case be tantamount to a majority. Canada’s premier columnist Rex Murphy speculates, with considerable evidence, that Trudeau and Singh have formed “a (silent) concordat.”
