Expert: Justin Trudeau’s French isn’t bad; Quebecers just don’t think he belongs - "Quebec’s criticism of Justin Trudeau’s French serves to position him as an “outsider” to Quebecois identity, according to a professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Yulia Bosworth, assistant professor of French linguistics at Binghamton, studied Quebec’s “obsession” with Justin Trudeau’s French, which pundits and scholars perceive as terrible and construe as a major failure on his part, both personal and professional. She determined that Quebec’s criticism reflects its view of Canada’s current prime minister as an outsider and its denial of him as a francophone, or someone who speaks French. Bosworth determined that Quebec’s language attitudes and ideologies are dominated by linguistic purism and French monolingualism."
‘Freedom Convoy’ and UFOS. When will Ottawa give us straight answers? | The Star - "An eight-month investigation by National Post and the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) of 1,308 judicial and tribunal appointments by the Liberal government since 2016 shows an overwhelming majority — 76.3 per cent — of appointees who had previously made political donations had given to the Liberal Party of Canada. In comparison, just 22.9 per cent of appointees had given to the Conservative Party of Canada, and 17.9 per cent of those who donated gave to the New Democratic Party. Moreover, the number of Conservative donors appointed to the judiciary has dropped significantly since the Liberals came to power, whereas the number of NDP donors more than doubled between 2016 and 2022, the year the NDP entered an agreement to support the Liberals... Legal scholars say partisanship within the judicial appointment process not only constrains the diversity of the judiciary and undermines the public’s confidence in the country’s legal system, it also brings political influence into decisions made by Canada’s courts. “We continue to have this challenge of partisan affiliation in those who are getting appointed,” said Erin Crandall, associate professor of political science at Acadia University who has published extensively on Canada’s judicial appointment processes... In 2019, the Globe and Mail revealed that the PMO used a partisan database called Liberalist, as well as caucus resources and MP networks, to vet candidates recommended by the justice minister before formalizing their appointment"
Ottawa to remove GST on new rental housing, ask grocers to stabilize prices: PM - "most of Thursday's measures surround housing, with the federal government pledging to remove GST on construction of new rental apartment buildings — a move Trudeau first promised in the 2015 election that brought the Liberals to power. On Thursday, Trudeau said Liberals deliberately scrapped that promise because it didn't respond to needs at the time."
Canadians are right to despair over a dysfunctional Canada - The Hub - "It came to office in 2015 purporting to have a new way of thinking about economic policymaking that would place an emphasis on inclusion and then growth would follow. What we’ve gotten instead is broad-based stagnation that has failed to deliver on either goal. Yet the Canadian malaise isn’t merely an economic story. It’s also evident in other parts of our society. A major one is the fragility of Canada’s health-care systems. Even though the pandemic has officially ended, we still face a wait-time crisis across the country... The Trudeau government’s health-care spending deals with the provinces have failed to arrest these trends or produce meaningful results more generally. They instead reflect the government’s reductionist view that the number of zeroes in a press release is tantamount to solving a problem. Public borrowing is relatively easy. Public administration is hard. So, too, apparently is keeping track of how many people are in the country. The government recently conceded that its method of counting non-permanent residents (such as those on student or work visas) is flawed and has led to an undercounting of about 1 million people per year. And that’s hardly the sole problem in the country’s immigration system. The monthly application backlog has averaged as many as 860,000 so far this year. These numbers are actually down from a peak of more than two million late last year—though the reduction has not primarily come through efficiency or improved processes but simply by waiving eligibility requirements for hundreds of thousands of applicants. There are also growing concerns about the proper settlement of refugees in light of reports about them sleeping on the streets of the country’s major cities. The prime minister has called these developments “unacceptable in a country like Canada” but he seemingly fails to recognize that they reflect his own government’s top-down immigration targets that have essentially left provinces and cities struggling to fulfill Ottawa’s fantastical promises. The list of failures invariably goes on and on. The Hub has comprehensively covered the housing crisis in which one must now belong to the top 10 percent of income earners in order to aspire to own a home in the Greater Toronto Area, as well as the alarming crime and substance abuse problems exhibiting themselves in big and small communities across the country. Then there are more elementary signs of state-capacity challenges that have left doubts about whether the Trudeau government’s run-up in federal spending has come with any attendant improvements in its state capacity. Last year’s passport delays (which the prime minister similarly called “unacceptable”) and the 67,400 percent increase in the cost of the ArriveCan app (which incidentally he called “highly illogical and inefficient”) have become symbols of Ottawa’s basic dysfunction... As the government has grown, its failures have perhaps counterintuitively become more ubiquitous, and the public’s hope and trust have suffered as a result. The net result is the malaise in which we now find ourselves. We know in other words what the Trudeau government’s unprecedented deficits and debt have bought us: despair. But in hindsight it was a highly predictable outcome. The Trudeau government’s unconstrained vision was destined to run up the federal debt and undermine the basic functioning of the national government. As the old public policy axiom goes, if you have too many priorities, you ultimately have none. It’s been a painful education for the prime minister, his government, and the rest of us."
Poilievre is killing us, Liberals say, asking what Trudeau is up to - "Backbench MPs, those without caucus responsibilities who haven’t sat down with the PM, generally feel their voices are ignored. They are frustrated at the way the prime minister treats his caucus. They recount how he frequently monopolizes caucus meetings with talking points, leaving little time for members’ input. Not that, they feel, he values what they think. “This is a prime minister who never likes to even allow you to finish your sentence in national caucus,” expressed one MP. “[If] you’re going to say something he’s not going to like, he always cuts you off.” “Why should I listen to you folks?,” said another MP mimicking Trudeau. “You’re all know-nothings and coattail candidates.” “People are really disillusioned,” offered another MP. “Really, really, disillusioned,” said a fourth. Some MPs said that over their entire careers, the PMO had never spent as much time listening to them as I had in my 30-minute calls with them... Some want more investments in housing to address declining affordable stock as well as soaring home prices that raised rents, and high interest rates that keep many new projects grounded. They’d like to see HST rebates for developers, incentives for rental units, and increased infrastructure allotments to update municipal water and sewage systems so more homes can be built. They’d like to see the government grant struggling business owners an extension on their COVID loans, and rural Canadians helped by excluding home heating from the carbon tax. Others want the government to stop focusing so much on “woke” issues. Still others feel the Liberals need to return to their centrist roots and chart a path back to balance, if they are to be re-elected."
It's true: gatekeepers are keeping Canada dead last - The Hub - "When it comes to much-needed investment in the natural resource sector, the federal government’s preference for gatekeeping over growth is part of the problem. It’s worth looking at a few examples to bring the issue to life. Regulatory processes have only gotten more burdensome since B.C.’s Site C hydroelectric project received environmental certification. Approved in the final year of the Harper government, the process was no picnic even back then. The environmental assessment required a 15,000-page Environmental Impact Statement, stuffed into 27 binders measuring 17 feet long when lined up on a bookshelf. Within those pages was excruciatingly detailed documentation of everything from the expected—fish, birds, wildlife, air quality—to the less expected—”visual resources”, ancient “subsistence procurement sites”, “lithic scatters” (not stone tools themselves, but the tiny flakes of rock knocked off during the tool-making process). Having withstood more than a dozen court challenges (adding even more costs and uncertainty), Site C has prevailed at least partly because it’s a public, ratepayer-funded project that is crucial to meeting climate targets. Now imagine how prospects look for private investment in the much-maligned oil and gas or forestry sectors. Demand for liquefied natural gas is growing and is expected to almost double by 2040. At the same time, democratic countries are looking to reduce their reliance on Russian natural gas. LNG is also a means of combatting climate change, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions by displacing coal-fired generation overseas. It is telling that, despite this context, oil and gas get no more than a few brief mentions in the budget, usually in the context of curbing emissions or transitioning away from the sector... It’s the same story when it comes to forestry. The industry cites greater regulatory complexity and uncertainty as major challenges, and even B.C.-based forestry companies are investing their dollars elsewhere, to the tune of $10 billion in 2021 alone. It was laughable to see the budget mention “lengthy regulatory processes” as one among a “unique set of challenges” facing Canada’s critical minerals industry. The fact is, the government has done nothing but add to the burden faced by the natural resource sector... In 2018, a new federal Impact Assessment Act was implemented, which, in addition to expanding the list of impacts to be considered, tacks on a 180-day ‘planning process’ and adds multiple stop-the-clock opportunities along the way. It also increases the likelihood of referral to the onerous review panel process. On top of this, the government has enshrined into law the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, article 32(2) of which requires that states must work with Indigenous people to obtain “free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories.” The real-world implications of this, and UNDRIP as a whole, are poorly understood and increase uncertainty... So yes, Pierre Poilievre is right. When it comes to natural resources, governments at all levels seem more interested in adding gatekeepers than they are in facilitating growth. We need a course correction, and fast, if we are to have any reason for optimism about Canada’s economic future."
The Post Millennial on X - "Trudeau—who has been in power for 8 years—attempts to blame Harper for the current housing crisis"
Liberals need to help Bank of Canada slay inflation, not hinder it - "Government policy has actually been procyclical. With the economy growing and unemployment at 50-year lows, Ottawa increased federal spending, increased the deficit, increased the debt, and expanded the federal workforce. What ever happened to counter-cyclical fiscal policy? At the end of 2022, despite widespread labour shortages and inflation running five per cent above target, Ottawa continued to stimulate the economy, refusing to curtail discretionary spending, shift capital outlays to beyond the cycle, freeze the size of the public service or do anything else to pull back on demand and help the Bank of Canada get inflation back under control. Compounding its procyclical fiscal policy, the government has made the inflation battle harder by increasing immigration flows at a time of severe housing shortages and sharply rising rents and home prices."
The Amazing Zoltan on X - "Another disastrous Trudeau town hall. First PMJT claims that democracy only works if everyone agrees with him. Trudeau then says that anyone who disagrees with him "went down an internet rabbit hole." Finally, he claims no one but him is smart enough to fix the things he broke"
EDITORIAL: If Canada is divided, that’s on Trudeau | Toronto Sun - "We’re beginning to wonder what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes he is responsible for in Canada, as opposed to things he says are not his fault... if Trudeau believes he is in no way responsible for Canadians being divided, why did Canadians surveyed in a Leger poll last year agree by a margin of 61% to 22% — the rest were undecided — that Trudeau has created national unity problems because he “often favours certain groups and regions of the country over others?” Liberal MP Joel Lightbound, following the 2021 federal election, during which Trudeau weaponized the issue of vaccine mandates – a strategy he continued when he invoked the Emergencies Act, said: “I can’t help but notice with regret that both the tone and the policies of my government changed drastically on the eve and during the last election campaign. From a positive and unifying approach, a decision was made to wedge, to divide and to stigmatize … Now that we have one of the most vaccinated populations in the world, we’ve never been so divided.”"
Globe editorial: Why won’t Justin Trudeau name a new ethics commissioner? - The Globe and Mail - "It has been almost six months since the previous ethics commissioner, Mario Dion, resigned on Feb. 21, but the Liberals have yet to appoint his replacement. They made a patently lame attempt at naming an interim commissioner in March when they gave the job to the sister-in-law of a senior Liberal cabinet minister. The inevitable outcry forced Martine Richard to step down three weeks later... The real problem was and is the Liberals’ rank indifference to the rules governing the conduct of MPs. Ms. Richard’s tone-deaf appointment notwithstanding, nothing captures that toxic culture better than Mr. Dion’s recommendation, as he left office, that the government send its entire caucus for remedial courses on such core competencies as not giving lucrative contracts to your good friends and family members, and not attempting to influence a quasi-judicial tribunal on behalf of another person. Clearly, there is work for a federal ethics commissioner. And yet Mr. Trudeau still hasn’t replaced Mr. Dion. This is problematic in more than one way. Under the rules governing the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, the Prime Minister is allowed to name an interim commissioner for a maximum of six months. Given that Mr. Trudeau named Ms. Richard to the job on March 28, he presumably has until the end of September to name a fulltime replacement. Mr. Dion this week said the delay in naming a new commissioner means investigations have to sit on a shelf until someone is appointed... every province and territory has managed to put an ethics watchdog in place. Worse, the federal job has now been vacant for the longest period since the current version of the role was created in 2007. That means the government that has had the largest number of high-profile run-ins with the ethics commissioner is also the government that has allowed the henhouse to sit unguarded for a record number of days. Foxes are gonna fox, to use a more modern version of the old saying... one despairs that he may never get around to it, because Mr. Trudeau is a serial failure when it comes to filling federal vacancies. The Globe and Mail reported on a critical shortage of federally appointed judges in May, when there were 88 vacancies on benches across the country. As of this month, that number has been reduced to... 86. There is also the matter of naming someone to head a public inquiry into Beijing’s interference in Canadian elections, a responsibility Mr. Trudeau continues to duck. A democracy needs independent watchdogs to guard its institutions against the threats that are always skulking about. Why doesn’t Mr. Trudeau understand that?"
Elizabeth May frustrated by lack of detail in top secret documents on foreign interference - "Green Party Co-Leader Elizabeth May is expressing frustration with the level of information contained in the two top-secret documents on foreign interference she was permitted to review this week."
Liberals bring identity quotas to Canada Media Fund - "In 2021, the Liberals said they would dramatically boost funding for the Canada Media Fund. And they did — but that funding came with diversity quotas and a new emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It’s another bald-faced example of the Liberals infusing identity into public (or publicly-funded-but-government-adjacent) media programs to craft Canada in their image. Now, the program is beholden to diversity-based budgeting (with diversity “targets” in its largest funding branch), an identity tracking system for content producers and a “narrative positioning” policy that guides how stories about certain groups are told... For the most part, everyone other than straight, white, non-disabled men get special treatment by the fund. Aside from getting mandatory coverage through the use of quotas, the groups listed above are shielded with “narrative positioning” policies that took effect this year. If the main character, key storyline, or subject matter has anything to do with the above groups, creators must either be from that group or take “comprehensive measures that have and will be undertaken to create the content responsibly, thoughtfully and without harm.” These can include consultations, sharing of ownership rights, and hiring policies from the community. While narrative requirements weren’t mandated by the Liberals in their grant to the fund, they complement the overall DEI strategy. Storytellers vying for certain grants have to sign an attestation form agreeing with the narrative policy and write a compliance plan if their works have anything to do with the above groups. Plainly, it’s a force of narrative control. This doesn’t go both ways; women can make documentaries about men consult-free, non-white people can make TV dramas about white people consult-free, and so on... Together, it looks like both the fund, and the party responsible for doubling its taxpayer support are more concerned about the identities of filmmakers and TV producers than the actual media being produced."
Liberals planning to use C-11 to impose ‘diversity’ rules on streaming media - "The Liberals are using C-11, the online amendment to the Broadcast Act, to require internet broadcasters to include ‘diversity quotas’ for streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Apple TV... Under proposed draft regulations, the CRTC would require the companies to dedicate 30% of its spending on independent English programming — such as programming for children and youth, dramas, documentaries, news and public affairs — to go to producers who self-identify as ‘indigenous, official language minorities, visible and sexual minorities or disabled.’ Those requirements would increase to 35% by 2026."
Trudeau blocks release of info in China's interference to MP and media | Toronto Sun - "Bill Blair, then Canada’s public safety minister, has said he didn’t see the memo. He’s had many explanations, none of them satisfactory, on why he didn’t see it, and the only logical conclusion is that he’s bad at his job. Despite Katie Telford, Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff, stating that Trudeau reads every security briefing, he claims never to have seen it. The memo, issued a little over three weeks before the Trudeau Liberals called the 2021 election, had to have been seen by someone. The public safety minister’s chief of staff or someone in his office must have seen the memo before choosing not to do anything. In early May, The Toronto Sun submitted requests under Canada’s Access to Information Act to obtain copies of the tracking records for the memo. It’s customary for intelligence memos such as this to be tracked, so the government can keep records of who has received the information. Despite asking the Privy Council Office and Public Safety for the tracking records, both replied that they couldn’t find anything... either the government has abandoned a decades-old policy for handling such documents, or they don’t want to release them because they would incriminate them. When you combine the denial of records with their refusal to answer Michael Chong’s questions, it makes the idea that they are hiding something all the more plausible. More proof for why a public inquiry is needed if Canadians are to ever get at the truth"
Debt interest costs threaten sustainability of federal finances - "small interest rate increases can trigger large increases in government debt interest costs. Moreover, with anemic real GDP growth forecasts and an increase in interest rates, the long-term sustainability of the federal fiscal position becomes more of an issue. We are in for interesting times."
The federal government is relying on wishful thinking to rationalize federal deficits - "The prime minister and his finance minister routinely take to the media to justify federal spending and the deficit, expected to exceed $40 billion despite a surge in revenues. When they’re not attacking (as the prime minister recently did on Quebec’s most-watched talk show) people who argue for fiscal restraint as proponents of “austerity,” they invoke the idea of “crowding in.” But this is pure political chicanery. There’s no chance the current deficit will generate “crowding in,” despite what the prime minister says. So, what is crowding in? Generally, economists agree that budget deficits cause interest rates to increase. This makes private investment costlier—a process known as “crowding out.” But this comes with the assumption that the deficits are incurred for regular operating expenses. Things are different if the deficit is meant to finance expenses for uniquely productive projects that are complementary to what the private sector does such as X, Y, and Z. When this happens, economists speak of crowding in that might partially or completely offset the crowding out effect. Simply put, if governments pick the right projects and the right companies, they can attract and generate additional private-sector activity that would otherwise not occur, thus growing the economy. These uniquely productive projects must be goods and services that private producers could not profit from because there’s no way to charge consumers for using them. These are known as public goods. Historical examples include lighthouses, weather information services, postal services, roads, policing, national defence, and flood controls. Deficits to finance investments in these goods and services can actually help the private sector grow. Another way a deficit could be beneficial is if it generates a good with “spillovers.” A classic example would be a piece of military technology that’s repurposed by private providers. As such, if the government can again pick the right technologies, it could crowd in investments by the private sector. These are the two main ways that crowding in could theoretically happen. The problem is that crowding in practically rarely occurs... the list of things deemed “public goods” has been narrowed and contested. Governments already provide most things that are widely agreed upon—national defence, courts, policing. Moreover, a large share of the current deficit—for items such as $13 billion for dental care and increases in the Canada student grants—fail to even remotely qualify as public goods. With regard to spillovers, the case is even weaker. The heroic assumption is that governments can pick the right technologies and right companies to invest in—but in reality, governments appear ill-equipped to do so. Indeed, empirical studies on the effect of business subsidies or targeted support to technological adoption seem to find that government spending reduces this type of economic activity and sometimes deters further innovation. This inability to pick winners is also apparent in the types of programs—clean technology adoption, for example—that the federal government announced in its latest budget. Assessments of government efforts to fund green energies (and their adoption) both in the United States and Canada generally find that taxpayers were (on net) left worse off as most of the projects picked by governments ended up failing. It’s hard to imagine why the current plan to pick winners would work better than in the past. This is why empirical studies that attempt empirical generalizations regarding the importance of crowding in relative to crowding out tend to find that the latter dominates the former, especially in countries that already have large governments"
Justin Trudeau's 'woke agenda' critiqued at Conservative event - "Retired lieutenant general Michel Maisonneuve and his wife, Barbara, took the stage on Thursday at the Conservative Party convention(opens in a new tab), with the couple deriding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's so-called "woke agenda(opens in a new tab)." "Our country has been led by a government that has been focused on virtue signalling," Maisonneuve told the crowd in Quebec City. "Apologizing for who we are and how we came to be." His wife echoed the sentiment from Maisonneuve, accusing Trudeau of having an "innate ability to see endless flaws in everyone else, but none in himself." Maisonneuve previously generated headlines following a 2022 speech in Ottawa in which he criticized the Trudeau Government's climate change policies and denounced cancel culture. In Thursday night's speech(opens in a new tab) he once again took aim at the "woke movement" that he claims is destroying "Canadian values.""
Barbara Kay: Mary Simon’s flippancy about French is a danger to Canada
From 2021
Chris Selley: These are the only people who should ever be considered for governor general - "This is a feature, not a bug. The greatest strength of a well-run constitutional monarchy — which certainly describes Canada’s under Elizabeth II’s peerless stewardship — is precisely that it walls off fundamental matters of state in a zone of apolitical dignity. You don’t have to like the monarch, or her representative. But you should at least appreciate that their caprices do not alter the ship of state’s course. The only actual job a Canadian viceregal has is to represent the head of state on Canadian soil, at the federal or provincial legislature in question. The head of state is Elizabeth II, who has no public opinions about religion versus science, women in the STEM professions, head injuries in professional sport or anything else our last two governors general have weighed in on. The pay is good and the perks are considerable at Rideau Hall, but this should be seen as just recompense for smart, accomplished, dedicated people keeping their mouths shut and doing what their learned advisers tell them. By and large, the provinces are pretty good at appointing dutiful people to fill the role. The only lieutenant governor I can name off the top of my head is Ontario’s Elizabeth Dowdeswell, because I have covered Queen’s Park in person. She seems to really love her job, which is to say showing up and saying pleasantly uncontroversial things at cabinet swearings-in, portrait unveilings and other events, and hosting receptions afterward in her quarters. I am sure she has opinions about things. Born in Belfast, raised in rural Saskatchewan, she has led an accomplished life as a deputy minister in both Regina and Ottawa, and as executive director of the UN Environment Programme, and as a professor at the University of Toronto. Maybe I could find some of those opinions if I went looking for them. But as it stands I have absolutely no idea what those opinions are, and I don’t particularly care, and that’s exactly as it should be. The federal viceregal will always be higher profile by default, but the same principle should hold: Anyone who desperately wants the job shouldn’t get it. Anyone who deserves the job probably isn’t on any normal person’s radar. By rights, the next governor general should be someone almost no one has ever heard of. The idea of appointing an Indigenous governor general, specifically and on principle, was reportedly in the process of being achieved when Trudeau’s gang came up with Payette and figured they couldn’t possibly lose. Clearly no vetting of any consequence was done: her reputation as a boss and coworker from hell long predated her installation at Rideau Hall... For a prime minister who has almost literally nothing of note to offer except symbolic gestures, Trudeau is absolutely terrible at pulling off symbolic gestures."
Absence of a governor general in a minority government situation 'completely untenable,' scholar says - "this is very bad for Justin Trudeau because Julie Payette was his choice. She was not vetted properly, and this once again calls his judgment into question. You cannot repair nor undo this. This is a major stain on the reputation of Justin Trudeau and it’s not good for the Liberal government at all."
