Geoff Russ: Liberals melt over Rolling Thunder protest, but ignore left-wing vandals in Montreal - "Comparing the weekend’s overblown coverage of Ottawa’s Rolling Thunder protest to the concurrent violent May Day protests in Montreal, exposes the blatant double-standards of how Canada’s governing politicians confront political violence... Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued stern statements about possible hate crimes and violence before they arrived, while his cabinet ministers forecasted a possible repeat of the Freedom Convoy. Unfortunately for them, almost nothing politically beneficial, ie. a violent protest that they could use as a wedge, actually happened during the rather tame weekend in the capital... Unlike the Freedom Convoy, Rolling Thunder left little trace of their presence in the capital after the weekend protest concluded. A few people were arrested in tussles with police, and residents of the city’s Centretown neighbourhood once again probably got less sleep than usual for the second time in four months. Nobody’s place of worship was vandalized, except a church popular with the bikers. Nonetheless, Rolling Thunder got the lion’s share of media coverage, and commentary by federal politicians this weekend. Few people are probably aware that a more political, and more dangerous event occurred in Montreal over the same weekend. So-called “anti-capitalists,” hiding behind masks, marched through the streets of the country’s second-largest city last Saturday, and were filmed terrorizing people they thought were getting in their way. Near the Place du Canada, the mob marched through the streets and began smashing windows, and spray painting parked cars. At least one person filming them had their camera knocked out of their hands. It was not gravely acknowledged by the prime minister, or really any politician of note. During last year’s May Day protests, an elderly couple with the misfortune to be driving on wrong street at the wrong time, became surrounded by a hostile mob. One member of the crowd began smashing the front of the couple’s car with his foot, while several others banged their hands on the side of it. In a video of the incident, the driver, a presumably terrified grey-haired lady, appears to open the car door to try and exit her vehicle. The door was pushed back in her face, forcing her back inside the car, while more rioters damaged it with kicks and other blows. May Day riots have been allowed to become an annual tradition in Montreal. The destruction is normalized, and at this point, federal politicians have nothing to gain from condemning it. For lawmakers who treat political violence, or the illusion of it, as a political opportunity, attacks on elderly couples are irrelevant if they cannot curry political capital off of it. Last summer, Canada suffered what was probably the biggest wave of religious hate-crimes in living memory. Scores of churches were burned, damaged, or vandalized across the country. This was done in the name of Indigenous justice, even as Indigenous leaders swiftly told those committing the hate-crimes to stop their activities immediately. The motivation for the arson was either labelled “understandable” by the prime minister, or, not mentioned at all. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said the worst thing about burning the churches was how it could lead to forest fires, and avoided condemning it on political, or moral, grounds. Nonetheless, doubtful, and ultimately misreported, stories that truckers tried burning down apartments in Ottawa was enough for Jagmeet Singh to decide to support Trudeau’s invoking of the Emergencies Act... As far as excuses for invoking the Emergencies Act’s go, the crown jewel was stating the truckers were going to overthrow the government. It was a theory that would not have stuck if the US Capitol wasn’t stormed on January 6 last year, leaving a segment of the Canadian population paranoid about a Canadian copy of it. The closest an overthrow came to actually happening was far-right Ontario MPP, Randy Hillier knocking over a loose fence on Parliament Hill."
Keean Bexte on Twitter - "To journalists across the country and around the world: Thank you for your relentless pursuit of the truth, and for your commitment to sharing those truths. Today, we celebrate your work – and we pay tribute to your colleagues who have been injured or lost their lives on the job."
"You literally had me arrested for trying to cover a press conference of yours."
Sabrina Maddeaux: How Trudeau drove away younger voters no longer seduced by empty celebrity - "Liberals erred on the public mood because they failed to predict the top issue among voters. They were certain it’d be the pandemic; that the effusive high of an open summer and vaccines for all who want them would inspire a red wave across the nation. That they’d be richly rewarded for their role in getting Canadians through the crisis. However, in their rush to pat themselves on the back, the Liberals completely missed another crisis gripping the nation. The affordability crisis, which includes the cost of living and housing, had become so dire even a deadly pandemic couldn’t overshadow it. Not only did it become the top issue among the general voting population, it became particularly important for those under 40, who also happen to be Trudeau’s formerly most reliable base. Among millennials, there’s a striking 25-point gap between their top voting issue, which is cost of living, and their second most important issue, which is climate change and the environment. In the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), 45 per cent of those 18 to 34 years old cite the cost of housing as their top issue. While the last two elections saw young Canadians start grassroots campaigns focused on the environment and social justice, this year saw them form groups like Canada Housing Crisis... To add insult to financial injury, while the Liberals didn’t bother to release their housing platform until weeks into the campaign, they kicked off the election by mailing $500 cheques to seniors, regardless of the recipients’ means. The glaring contradiction made it clear which generation the party prioritized and which they took for granted"
Diane Francis: Canada no longer deserves a seat at the big boys' table - "Due to mediocre growth, high taxation, low productivity and over-regulation, Canada hasn’t made the cut for a while, but stays in the G7. Both Italy and Canada are smaller, in terms of nominal gross domestic product, than China and India. Canada is the world’s ninth-largest economy, according to International Monetary Fund estimates, but — at current growth rates — could be overtaken in a couple of years by South Korea, Russia and Australia. Of course, size isn’t everything, it’s also the quality of international participation that counts, which brings me to Trudeau’s pathetic defence spending lapses. According to NATO statistics, Canada continues to ignore the NATO goal of spending the equivalent of two per cent of GDP on defence... The problem is that Canada is flagging because Trudeau and his cabinet of amateurs aren’t big-league players and are principally concerned with dividing the pie into politically correct pieces rather than growing it by nurturing enterprise and initiative. As a result, Canada loses international clout, albeit retaining a nice reputation as a peaceful social democracy sheltered by the U.S. economy and military. That’s not all bad, but it is naive. It’s a nasty world out there and Canada’s weaknesses have been, and are, handily exploited by China, among others. Money and military might count around the G7, G20 and NATO tables, and it’s a shame that Canadians have lost their once-strong voice. Trudeau blew millions of taxpayer dollars lobbying for votes to get a useless Security Council seat at the United Nations, only to come in third. Meanwhile, China kicks sand in our faces. It cancels trade contracts, bullies Chinese-Canadian citizens on our soil and holds two innocent Canadians hostage to spring a Chinese heiress charged with fraud in the U.S. Worse, Canada’s reputation among the countries that belong to the all-important Five Eyes intelligence network (U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Canada) has been horribly tarnished since the head of the National Intelligence Coordination Centre was jailed on suspicions involving collaboration with China. Canada is not run by grown-ups, but by a cabinet that has zero expertise in business, economics or much of anything else except spending and taxing. The result is falling standards of living due to productivity drops. Looking at comparative statistics on GDP per hour worked tells the story. The U.S. is third, Germany is seventh, Australia is ninth … Canada is 14th, behind the rest of western Europe."
Majority of Canadians say Trudeau should resign following election, believe country more divided than ever: poll - "77 per cent of respondents said Canada feels more fractured than ever following a summer campaign that produced roughly the same seat count as the last parliamentary session. Just 23 per cent of respondents said the country is now more unified under Trudeau. A slim majority of respondents (52 per cent) said Canada’s democratic system is broken and “needs a major overhaul.” The results come at a time when divides over regional interests and government-led responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have remained a central issue in Canadian politics. In his acceptance speech earlier this week Trudeau sought to downplay the divisions within Canada, saying “that’s not what I see.” But that contention appears to run counter to what recent polling suggests, said John Wright, executive vice-president at Maru Public Opinion, and glosses over some of the deeper feelings of resentments, particularly in oil-dependent provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan... 55 per cent of respondents said Trudeau should step down and allow a new leader to take the helm, compared with 45 per cent who believed he should stay. That was the highest proportion calling on a leader to resign, along with Green Party leader Annamie Paul, for whom 55 per cent of respondents also said she should step down."
Cursed by catastrophically low approval ratings, Joe Biden is still more popular than Trudeau - "Biden is still more popular than Justin Trudeau, a prime minister only three months out from his last election win. The latest numbers from Gallup have Biden’s approval rating at 40 per cent — one of the lowest ever for a U.S. president at the end of his first year in office. Meanwhile, Trudeau’s latest approval rating stands at 38 per cent, according to the Angus Reid Institute. That’s actually a couple points higher than the 36 per cent approval that Trudeau was enjoying in the days after his victory in the Sept. 20 federal election (and seven points higher than his career low of 31 posted in August 2019)... And it’s not just the prime minister. Across the board, Canadian premiers are also experiencing rock-bottom popularity compared to U.S. governors. The latest Angus Reid Institute numbers on premiers saw five out of nine polling below 50 per cent... A big reason for the disparity is the United States’ general adherence to a two-party system, which usually means that — at any one time — at least half of voters are being governed by their chosen candidate... Since the Second World War, in fact, only two prime ministers have won a federal election while also claiming at least half the popular vote: Brian Mulroney in 1980 and John Diefenbaker in 1958. Kurl also notes that Americans are generally more extreme in their views — including their likes and dislikes of political leaders... But while Canadians may hate the individual politicians who run their governments, the picture changes completely when it comes to those governments themselves. On the eve of the last federal election in September, a poll by the Institute on Governance and Advanced Symbolics found that an incredible 65 per cent of Canadians retained trust in their government. In the United States, by contrast, numbers from Pew Research Center find that the American people haven’t retained Canada-levels of trust in their government since the days before the Vietnam War. In Pew’s most recent survey in April, just 24 per cent of respondents said they trusted their federal government to do what is right."
Opinion: Justin Trudeau is taking after his father—and Canadians will pay the price - The Hub - "First, there’s the fiscal record. The two Trudeaus share a proclivity for deficit-financed spending... Pierre Trudeau’s expansion of existing programs and introduction of new programs, financed largely by debt, set the stage for the massive deficits and debt accumulation of the 1980s and early 1990s, which led to a near debt and currency crisis... The two Trudeaus also introduced policies that hurt the oil and gas sector and Western Canada more broadly. Trudeau the Elder created Petro-Canada as a Crown Corporation and introduced the National Energy Program, which created animosity and distrust of Ottawa, particularly in Alberta. Trudeau the Younger introduced a national carbon tax, a cap on greenhouse gas emissions that only applies to the oil and gas sector, a subjective review process for large infrastructure projects that observers agree basically prohibits energy-related projects (including pipelines), and banned bitumen exports from the west coast. Tensions with the West resulted in stark electoral setbacks for both Trudeaus... Interestingly for both Trudeaus, given their roots and connection with Quebec, both experienced a surge in Quebec nationalism... Finally, Pierre Trudeau was the only prime minister to invoke the War Measures Act during peacetime—specifically, in 1970 during what became known as the October Crisis, which involved political kidnappings and bombings by the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ). And Justin Trudeau is the only prime minister to use the Emergencies Act (which replaced the War Measures Act in 1988) in response to the protests last month. This move sparked widespread opposition, including from multiple premiers and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, with many experts concerned about the precedent this sets for future use of the Act."
Judge slaps down Trudeau government for denying summer jobs grants to Christian university - "In an unusually harsh judicial slapdown of the Trudeau government, a federal judge has ruled that an Ontario university was barred access to the Canada Summer Jobs Program for little reason other than the fact that it was a Christian institution. In a decision on Tuesday, Justice Richard Mosley ruled that the federal government had breached “procedural fairness” in its treatment of Redeemer University, a private Christian liberal arts university in Hamilton, Ont. – and had denied the school funding based solely on its religious opposition to same-sex marriage. In a rare move, Mosley also ordered the federal government to pay Redeemer’s full legal costs, which amounted to $102,000... In 2019, Redeemer University applied for $104,187 from the Canada Summer Jobs Program in order to subsidize 11 temporary positions at the school. At the time, Redeemer had been participating in the Canada Summer Jobs Program since 2006 without incident. Within two months, the application was rejected on the grounds that Redeemer could not demonstrate “that measures have been implemented to provide a workplace free of harassment and discrimination.” At the time of the application, Redeemer University required its students to avoid “sexual intimacies which occur outside of a heterosexual marriage” – a policy that also informed the selection of faculty and staff. Nevertheless, those strictures didn’t extend to the school’s 11 Canada Summer Jobs Program positions, which ranged from summer camp attendants to workers at an onsite water treatment plant. In its application Redeemer had even expressly pledged to target “LGBTQ2 youth” for hiring... Redeemer University hadn’t been rejected out of any red flags in its application, but because of a “cursory search of the Internet” to which Redeemer hadn’t been given the chance to respond. “If the concern of (Service Canada) was that Redeemer discriminated based on sexual orientation, there was no contemporaneous evidence of that in the file”... Justice Mosley added “there is no evidence … that (Service Canada) made any overt attempt to consider Redeemer’s rights to freedom of religion, freedom of expression or freedom of association in considering its application.” Or, as Redeemer University lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos summed up the government’s stance, “we don’t like your position on sexual morality and that’s why you’re denied.” In Polizogopoulos’ submissions to the court, he alleged that Redeemer had been subjected to a “background check” beyond the usual scope of the Canada Summer Jobs Program application proceed... Interim president David Zietsma referenced a section of the Civil Marriage Act – the 2005 law which legalized same-sex marriage in Canada – which states that “no person or organization shall be deprived of any benefit” if they held official beliefs viewing marriage “as the union of a man and woman to the exclusion of all others.” Said Zietsma, “we were concerned about the precedent this kind of discrimination would set for religious institutions.” The lawsuit intentionally did not seek payment of the $104,187 grant, but was pursued instead because of the “principles involved.” In 2018, the Canada Summer Jobs Program was subject to a wave of lawsuits after employment minister Patty Hajdu made funding conditional on organizations’ pledging their support for abortion. The federal government ultimately backed off the abortion pledge, and by the time Redeemer University made its 2019 application, Service Canada was instead mandating a much more general policy of a “safe, inclusive, and healthy work environment free of harassment and discrimination.” Redeemer University applied again for the Canada Summer Jobs Program in both 2020 and 2021. Polizogopoulos said that Service Canada delayed the school’s 2020 application until the program was out of money"
Melissa Mbarki: Trudeau's virtue signalling to First Nations is meaningless - "It took the Liberal government six years to implement eight of the 94 Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action. Averaging one item per year, it will take 94 years before we see any kind of meaningful change in First Nations communities. Seeing the prime minister kneeling at these gravesites was disrespectful in so many ways. I come from a strict traditional upbringing and we are not allowed to take pictures at our loved ones’ gravesites. Seeing these pictures circulated online and used for political purposes or sold as memorabilia made me furious. We do not know how these children died, if they experienced horrific abuse or sickness, or if they died alone. When we pay our respects to those who have passed, we lay down some tobacco and say prayers for them. Laying a teddy bear and kneeling beside a deceased child while continuing to fight Indigenous children in court, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is doing, is infuriating. If our prime minister believed in reconciliation, we would have made more progress on Indigenous issues over the last six years. What we are now seeing are growing tensions and acts of violence that are benefiting no one in this country... Kneeling for us means nothing when many communities do not have basic services like water, housing or reliable internet."
Joe Oliver: Our bare-faced Teflon PM blunders merrily along - "the most profligate budget in Canadian history; the long-delayed delivery of COVID-19 vaccines (at one point we ranked 98th in the world for full vaccinations per capita); Bill C-10’s attempted erosion of freedom of speech; and the coverup of sexual harassment allegations against the former Chief of Defence Staff. For the opposition parties, they are gifts that keep giving. A full recounting would require a noir novel. In an unprecedented attack on parliamentary democracy, the prime minister has now lengthened his losing streak by suing the Speaker of the House of Commons. The suit demanded that Anthony Rota, the only independent-thinking Liberal MP left standing, conceal documents revealing why two scientists from China were dismissed by a top-security Winnipeg virology lab. Meanwhile, the RCMP are investigating whether materials that can create lethal viruses were surreptitiously transferred to China, including to the Wuhan lab, which many suspect produced the COVID-19 virus and inadvertently leaked it to the world. The scientists hightailed it back to the Middle Kingdom, with which we do not have an extradition treaty. You can’t make this stuff up... The prime minister took over five months to replace Governor General Julie Payette, whom he had not properly vetted. A statue of Queen Elizabeth was torn down without concern expressed about this affront to our Head of State. The prime minister tends to accord inadequate respect to our constitutional governance, although the choice of Mary Simon is symbolically commendable, except for her inability to speak French. Mr. Trudeau refused to dismiss Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, Carolyn Bennett, who callously insulted Canada’s most prominent First Nations parliamentarian, Jody Wilson-Raybould, just after hundreds more children’s bodies were discovered buried in an unmarked gravesite adjacent to a residential school. Shamefully, 52 long-term drinking water advisories remain in 33 First Nations communities. The prime minister is better at virtue-signalling than actually delivering to Indigenous peoples. Mr. Trudeau labels Canada a systemically racist country, undercutting our international standing... Usually governments are not defeated; they defeat themselves. This government has gone to extraordinary lengths to do that, but to no avail."
LILLEY: Trudeau breaks a promise with massive carbon tax hike | Toronto Sun - "The Canadian economy has been battered and bruised over the last year as the country deals with the ravages of COVID-19... But have no fear, Justin Trudeau is coming to the rescue with just the thing to help, a giant increase in the carbon tax... Funny thing though, this is exactly what the Liberals said they would not do ahead of the last election... McKenna said at the time that the government has, “no plan to increase the price post 2022. For Conservatives to suggest otherwise is simply false and misleading.”... It all reminds me of another thing McKenna famously said. “If you repeat it, if you say it louder, if that is your talking point, people will totally believe it,” McKenna famously boasted in a Twitter video. Well, enough voters believed it, but then again, the Liberals were aided and abetted by the media on this. Several so-called “fact checks” were done on the Conservative claim that the Liberals would raise the carbon tax to $102 a tonne after the election and each one said the Conservatives claims were false and misleading. Turns out that the claims were false and misleading, not because the Liberals wouldn’t boost the tax but because they are boosting it to $170 a tonne rather than $102 a tonne. Shortly after the election the Liberals changed their tune from saying they wouldn’t raise the price to claiming they wouldn’t raise the price yet. After being sworn in as Trudeau’s new environment minister, John Wilkinson said the government would consider it in 2022 and after checking with the provinces. They didn’t wait until 2022 and they didn’t check with the provinces, something made abundantly clear by Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s reaction to the announcement... The Trudeau government is promising to expand the carbon tax rebate program, but that has been shown not to return the full cost for the average family and won’t with the expansion. For reasons that only Trudeau himself might understand, the federal government has decided that a period of economic recovery from a pandemic was the right time to boost taxes. This folks, is the reset Trudeau promised."
Is federal carbon pricing really revenue neutral? - The Globe and Mail - "Is federal carbon pricing really revenue neutral? - The Globe and Mail - "Ottawa says yes, since none of the funds go into general revenue. But the government is making decisions on how to spend that money, even though it is earmarked for a specific purpose. For the government’s assertion of revenue neutrality to hold, that spending has to be defined away as a transfer of revenue. It’s worth noting that British Columbia’s carbon tax, launched in 2008, was a much more straightforward example of revenue neutrality. The province reduced individual and corporate income taxes to offset, and then some, the amount of carbon revenue it raised (until it abandoned the goal of revenue neutrality, that is). Lastly, there is a significant hole in Ottawa’s assertion that federal carbon pricing is revenue neutral: the hundreds of millions of dollars that the government collects in GST on top of the carbon levy. Last year, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the resulting annual GST revenue will rise to $235-million this year. The federal government does not include that revenue in its calculation of revenue that it returns to households and businesses. If only for that reason, it’s not accurate – or at least not precise – for Ottawa to say that federal carbon pricing is revenue neutral... Fitch Ratings has a sobering analysis for anyone thinking that advanced economies can spend freely and grow their way out of their pandemic debt. In a report issued last week, the ratings agency throws a big splash of cold water on the theory that governments can count on a protracted period of low interest rates to gradually decrease the debt burden relative to the economy (a theory that Ottawa has signed on to). “History confirms that low interest rates relative to GDP growth is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for reductions in government debt ratios,” the report states. Fitch looked at 29 instances since 1960 of developed economies reducing government debt ratios by more than 10 percentage points (two of those examples were Canadian). Interest rates were not consistently lower than economic growth through those 29 cases – but operating budget surpluses or very small deficits were the norm, Fitch notes. Fiscal discipline drove debt reduction. Or, as the saying goes, when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. If history is a guide, debt reduction in the years ahead will require fiscal adjustments in addition to low interest rates."
MALCOLM: The erosion of democratic values in Canada | Toronto Sun - "Canadians hear a lot about the many threats towards freedom and democracy posed by U.S. President Donald Trump... Trudeau shut down Parliament in the midst of his heavy-handed economic lockdowns, claiming it was unsafe for Parliamentarians to gather in the House of Commons. While hidden away from the scrutiny of opposition MPs, Trudeau unveiled the largest increase in spending in Canadian history. He spent hundreds of billions of dollars in a matter of weeks, and did so without the usual Parliamentary oversight, transparency or accountability. Trudeau didn’t need Question Period, explained some members of the mainstream media, since he was taking daily questions from hand-selected journalists — the majority of whom have their salaries funded through money from the Trudeau government. One can imagine the accusations of authoritarian tactics if Trump by-passed congress to issue unilateral dictates while only allowing hand-picked, White House-funded journalists to ask him questions. When the House of Commons finally resumed, the public learned about just one of those secretive spending schemes: a deal to give $912 million of spending to a charity to dole out that had given the Trudeau family half a million dollars in perks and speaking fees. A Parliamentary committee began digging into this scandal, and quickly exposed the many falsehoods and contradictions in Trudeau’s explanation of events. Things were not looking good for Trudeau, so he turned to a relic of our system: he prorogued Parliament to shut down the investigations into his ethics violations. Instead of being met with consternation, the media downplayed the misuse of his power and pretended it was just another normal tool in the Prime Minister’s toolkit... Rather than unveiling a bold vision for rebuilding the economy or providing a realistic strategy for living with the COVID-19 pandemic, Trudeau trotted out a hodgepodge of previous Liberal campaign promises: a national child care system, expanded EI, government-funded pharmacare and more green energy schemes. Rather than uniting the country and allaying fears around the virus, we heard doom and gloom climate alarmism, hectoring about ill-defined systemic racism, threats to regulate media and the internet, nods to radical left-wing identitarian theories and very little about resuming life during the pandemic. And, we heard next to nothing about an economic recovery, Canada’s struggling natural resource industry or any kind of plan to rein in spending or pay back the enormous national debt. Doing his best impression of Hugo Chavez, Trudeau demanded that TV stations give him a primetime slot to personally address the nation — something that has only been done in Canada during wartime or constitutional crises. Trudeau’s handlers assured the networks that Trudeau’s remarks were of “urgent national importance” and it was “not a political address.” When Trudeau appeared on national television on Wednesday at dinnertime, he gave a political address, simply repeating the planks of his government’s Throne Speech and giving his Liberal pitch to Canadians. This is another abuse of power."
SNOBELEN: Trudeau's Tofino trip was many things – but it wasn't out of character | Toronto Sun - " Trudeau and his ilk believe that everything is gesture. Saying you are a feminist is just as, if not more, important than actually doing things that respect the power of women. Saying you are an environmentalist does not require you to turn out lights or turn down the thermostat (or avoid flying in a private jet to Tofino). In other words, it’s what you say (or symbolize), not what you do."
Rex Murphy: Trudeau's Tofino romp exposed him as a hypocrite in the eyes of the public. How can he continue to govern? - "He lowered the flag of the Canadian nation indefinitely to mark his sensitivity to First Nations’ concerns. Our nation’s singular banner, under which wars have been fought and the country worked its long way through numerous crises, had to go half-mast because he wanted a gesture that would offer political appeal. But he would not cancel a surfboard holiday because that gesture would interfere with his weekend."
Letters to the editor: Oct. 8: ‘Nowhere in Justin Trudeau’s mea culpa is the word sorry uttered.’ Prime Minister apologizes for Tofino trip on National Day For Truth and Reconciliation, plus other letters to the editor - The Globe and Mail - "Nowhere in Justin Trudeau’s mea culpa is the word “sorry” uttered. Admitting a mistake, yes. A regret? Of course. Regretting what, exactly? Getting caught, it seems."
When you create a virtue signalling day but go on holiday instead...
Opinion: The Liberals say we can’t risk a Conservative government. So why call an election? - The Globe and Mail - "if Canada is at too critical a juncture to risk a backward slide on all matters of importance under a Conservative-led government – then why did Mr. Trudeau invite that risk with a discretionary election call that could lead to a Conservative-led government?"
KINSELLA: Damning CNN report scrapes off some of Trudeau's glitter | Toronto Sun - "Justin thumbed out a tweet to the host of the show, comedian Trevor Noah. Here’s what he said: “Hey @Trevornoah – thanks for everything you’re doing to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s legacy at the @GlblCtzn festival. Sorry I can’t be with you – but how about Canada pledges $50M to @EduCannotWait to support education for women & girls around the world? Work for you? Let’s do it.” “Sorry I can’t be with you.” OMG! Isn’t that cool? Isn’t that dope? Just like that, our Justin offers $50 million — no pesky votes in the House of Commons, no oversight or review stuff or whatever! Just like it’s his own money! So sick. Justin got in a lot of trouble for that little stunt, as you may recall. Conservative MP Michelle Rempel called Trudeau “tone deaf” — and noted that Trudeau seemed to be more preoccupied with getting noticed by a celebrity than, you know, acting like a prime minister."
John Ivison: Blue Liberals are seeing red over new Trudeau cabinet - "this is not a cabinet that inspires confidence that it will be able to ensure continued prosperity and national unity. A number of Liberals reached out to express their concerns at the appointment of former activist Steven Guilbeault as the new environment minister and the removal of other more centrist voices like Marc Garneau and Jim Carr . “This is Canada’s first NDP prime minister,” said one, noting the irony that when real New Democrats have been elected provincially, they have been forced to abandon their “eat the rich” dogma... “The only pro-business thing Trudeau has ever done is legalize weed,” said one MP."
Matt Gurney: On gun control and other issues, Liberals are big on promises, but rarely deliver - "The soaring promises serve a political purpose — they earn votes for Trudeau. The actual hard work of implementation? The delivering on the things promised? That’s for suckers. It is abundantly clear that this prime minister and his government has concluded that actually delivering on promises is, in fact, for losers."
OPINION: Canadians will pay for Trudeau government’s record spending | Toronto Sun - "the Trudeau government was spending at historically high levels before the pandemic— with big consequences for Canadians... pre-pandemic, Prime Minister Trudeau’s government was one of only three in Canadian history to accumulate federal per-person debt outside of war or recession. By spending through borrowing, this government is effectively sticking future generations with the bill for today’s spending."
OPINION: Trudeau government broke the Debt Clock | Toronto Sun - "the Trudeau government has nearly doubled the federal debt since they came into power in 2015. Because Ottawa is spending taxpayers’ money as if it means nothing at all. And because we must return to prudent fiscal management before Prime Minister Trudeau’s deficits do further inflationary damage to our basic cost of living. The spending is so bad right now that the debt wouldn’t fit on to the CTF’s old debt clock, which sadly only had room for 12 digits. At more than $1 trillion, we ran out of room and the Trudeau government broke our debt clock. While spending on the COVID-19 mess has added to the problem, Trudeau’s spending bender was rocking long before March 2020. In 2018, the feds spent more money than in any one year of the Second World War or the recessions. That’s adjusted for both inflation and population growth. Readers can recall that in 2018 there was no massive natural disaster pummelling our country, no alien invasion to fend off and no plague to fight. Back then it was a mostly normal year coupled with a roaring economy in the States. When our key business partner is having a very good year, we should have been having a great one. The government should have been making hay while the sun shone, saving money for a rainy day. Instead, they were digging the debt hole deeper as fast as they could for no good reason and then the COVID-19 wave hit the country. While a $1 trillion debt tab looks hopeless, all is not lost. Remember that when you are in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. Remember the 1990s? Former finance minister and prime minister Paul Martin took deficits and balanced budgets very seriously... Martin eventually balanced the federal budget, slayed the deficit and stopped the debt clock. If we stop the spending madness now, hopefully the medicine won’t need to be as strong as it was back then. If we return to pre pandemic levels of spending, which were already all-time highs, the budget would be balanced within a few years."
