Canadian Government in Chaos

Things in Ottawa are happening too quickly for commentary. The Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Freeland, resigned two hours before she was to present the fall budget statement in the Commons, openly criticizing the PM for the policy she was about to announce.

The automatic next in line as finance minister, Champagne, immediately refused the position and refused to read the financial statement. 

PM Trudeau is apparently not available.

I don't know yet who actually presented the budget statement. 

Also this morning, the Housing minister resigned.

The Minister of Transport and Head of the Treasury Board, Anand, was cornered in the hall, and was clearly emotional. She was blindsided by Freeland’s resignation. She refused comment, saying she needed to compose her thoughts.

Situation changing hourly. Whatever happens next, this one will be in the history books.

This all seems to have been triggered by Trump’s tariff threat. Freedland refers to it in her resignation letter.

I think Trump knew what he was doing. Amid such chaos, it will be difficult for the NDP to vote confidence in the government yet again.

A Rap Against Poiliev

 

I don’t see nearly as many leftist posts on Facebook as I used to. Maybe because the cultural tide is turning; maybe because all my old leftist friends have by now unfriended and blocked me. Probably both.

But I saw this one today:

I don’t see nearly as many leftist posts on Facebook as I used to. Maybe because the cultural tide is turning; maybe because all my old leftist friends have by now unfriended and blocked me. Probably both. 

But I saw this one today:

 

The point being attempted, of course, that the Liberal government is much more distinguished and qualified to be in power than the opposition.

But note the obvious anomaly: they are comparing the opposition leader to the deputy PM, not the PM. Justin Trudeau is significantly less formally qualified for a role in government than Poilievre. B.A., B. Ed., short career as a drama teacher. His primary qualifications are simply that he is handsome and is named Trudeau. Poilievre, by contrast, was in the business, learning the political and government ropes, as assistant to Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper as opposition leaders, as a longtime MP, and as a cabinet minister. 

As for Freeland? It takes good marks, but it also costs a lot of money to go to Harvard. It costs a lot of money to go to Oxford as a foreign student, and you have to be rich to be able to stay out of the workforce for that long. Or long enough to write books, or learn five languages. Mostly what we learn from this is that Freeland was the child of two lawyers, while Poilievre was an orphan adopted by high school teachers. Chrystia Freeland, like Trudeau, was a child of privilege.

The Liberals are the party of the ruling elite, and those who doff the cap to them. The Family Compact, the Chateau Clique, the Laurentian Elite. They respect the credentials that show you are a member of that elite, that you have a pedigree. An Ignatieff, a Turner, a Martin, a Trudeau. Tories, by contrast, respect the common man and the self-made man who rose from obscurity by their own effort.

An Indian Take

... on Trudeau's and Freeland's brilliant foreign policies.

Canada Voted off the Island

Chrystia Freeland was the worst Canadian Foreign Minister ever, and the Trudeau government the least effective ever on foreign policy.

I am far from surprised that Canada lost its recent bid to be named to the UN Security Council.

What, after all, would you expect? Over the past few years, Canada has had high-level diplomatic spats with China, Russia, Saudi Arabia; lower-key, but notable, troubles with India and the USA. Having alienated many of the biggest players, why would Canada think it could muster the backing?

The most stunning thing, however, is the demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. They probably still think they are great successes. Blissfully unaware of their own incompetence, Trudeau and Freeland actually put their and Canada’s prestige on the line in a bid for a Security Council Seat. Something in itself of little value—only a vanity project, as far as I can see.

Canada Sinks in the World

In a recent interview, Kevin O’Leary made a point I too have made in correspondence, a point that is oddly overlooked, or rather, perhaps, suppressed by the mainstream press: leaving aside any arguments over ideology, the Trudeau government has been spectacularly inept. Most obviously in foreign affairs.

From World War Two roughly until Chrystia Freeland took the portfolio, Canada has been almost universally liked. Despite never being a neutral country, everyone seemed to trust it/us as basically honest and disinterested, polite and not arrogant. So folks abroad tended to prefer Canadian products and Canadian expertise. There seem, for example, to be many more Canadian than American ESL instructors abroad, despite the difference in populations. Canadians came without the political baggage of Americans or Brits.

Yet after a couple of years on Freeland’s watch, Canada has unprecedentedly awful relations with Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and even our biggest trading partner, the USA. Hardly insignificant enemies. It almost seems as though Canada no longer has any friends.

This seems to come from Liberal incompetence, virtue-signalling, and arrogance. Canada has been speaking loudly and carrying a tiny stick.

On the Huawei uproar, O’Leary suggests that Freeland was neatly suckered by Donald Trump. The US was fighting a trade war with China. The natural thing for China to do was to turn to Canada for many of the products they had been getting from the US. Big trade boon for Canada. Instead, Trudeau and Freeland promptly offended China so seriously that this was out of the question. It would have been an unacceptable loss of face to a pipsqueak country.

And then the unprecedented clown show since, of the Canadian government publicly feuding with their own ambassador.

O’Leary suggested how this could have been handled: advise the Chinese through diplomatic channels not to have Meng Wan Zhou’s plane land in Canada, but proceed directly on to Mexico. If necessary, some bogus excuse about bad weather or ospreys nesting on the tarmac could have been used.

Despite holding the bag for America on this one, Canada got nothing out of it. Freeland and Trudeau had also managed to trash our relationship with the US. They publicly insulted Trump in the middle of negotiations on a new NAFTA. Politically, he then had no option but to retaliate. As with China, the USA and Trump could not be seen to be pushed around by some penny-ante power.

The criticism of Saudi Arabia over human rights was meddling in the internal affairs of another country. To do that is deeply insulting to anyone; by the doctrine of human rights, it implies that the current government is illegitimate. Diplomacy consists in not saying such things, unless there is some strategic issue involved.

Or unless you want to pick a fight. The Saudi government again had little alternative but to massively retaliate, for the sake of their internal stability. A Saudi government that appeared to meekly accept scoldings from some Western infidel, grossly sinful “progressive” nation would not hold power long.

So too with India or Russia. Whether or not one agrees with the Trudeau government’s ethical case, what are Russia or India going to do but retaliate? If you want to swagger, you have to be ready to follow it up, at times, as needed, with dangerous and costly measures like sanctions and troop deployments. If you do not, you are doing nobody any good, and exposing innocent Canadians and Canadian business to harm. Aside from making the nation a laughingstock.

Now consider this: Freeland is supposed to be the cabinet's star. Everyone else is presumably worse.