My column for today.
Justin Trudeau may be the closest thing Canadian politics has to a celebrity, so when he says something, people notice. Normally for a politician, this is a good thing, but when you have the habit of firmly shoving your foot in your mouth as Trudeau often does, it can be a tad inconvenient.
This week, Trudeau caused fervor by professing that if Canada went in a direction he didn’t like, he would consider supporting Quebec independence. With that separatist statement, you can almost hear the tires of his future Liberal party leadership bus screeching to a halt.
Trudeau’s plummeting leadership potential and impaired political judgment aside, the Dauphin’s comments (as some media have aptly dubbed him) are actually quite fascinating.
The old Liberal line, which Trudeau’s father famously stood for, used to be ‘my Canada includes Quebec.’ The young Trudeau goes one step further — he implies that Quebec is the true bastion of Canadian values, and if the rest of the country (i.e. the West) keeps supporting those nasty, mean Conservatives who try to change those values, he would think about making Quebec a country.
Trudeau has his wires crossed. Quebec separatism, his father’s greatest political battle, was about differences in language, culture and law. But for the young Trudeau, it’s about values — liberal values that Trudeau, it seems, believes the rest of Canada doesn’t hold as closely as Quebec. Values that he claims Harper, who Canadians elected with a majority government, is eroding.
Here’s a question for the Dauphin: if Quebecers hold these so-called Canadian liberal values so tightly, why haven’t they voted Liberal in almost 30 years?
Trudeau’s petulant, childish comments reveal a lot about his political maturity, but more importantly, they show the Liberals have learned nothing since Canadians slapped them with an eviction notice last election.
The Liberal party is still crippled by the same arrogance as they were when governing, only now they are a caved-in third party with gaffe-prone Trudeau at their helm.
It’s time they learned that you can be a good Canadian without being a Liberal.
Harper won a majority — even picking up seats in liberal Toronto — because Canadians are beginning to identify more with conservative values. A recent poll by Angus Reid found that a third of Canadians perceive the country is moving to the right.
Until the Liberals figure out that they don’t have a patent on what Canadian values are, they’ll never be in power again.
3 Responses to Trudeau’s conditional Canada
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I apologize for voting for Pierre Trudeau. I was young and it was my first federal vote, but it was a bad and naive choice by a conservative. I never wanted all the social justice stuff that he put in place. I did not understand how much havoc he would reek in the ensuing years. He created a feeling excitement in 1968, in a way that Robert Stanfield did not; yet it is Stanfield who probably would have been a better choice as Prime Minister, but we early boomers and everyone else did not give him the chance. It was similar to the way that Obama snowed Americans. I think Stanfield saw some dangers in what Lester Pearson had done, but we young people did not quite get it at that time.
Margaret Trudeau was a Simon Fraser grad who attended protests and had lots of Marxist profs`, so it is not surprising that entitled Justin wants to take his football and go home if the ROC wants to cut off his allowance.
He only cares about Justin (he routinely talks in the 3rd person when referring to himself), not Canada. It is pure politics to feather his own future nest, so be it if it is to Canada’s and Canadian’s detriment.
Stir up the Quebec racism and any other feelings of some phantom or even real hurt, But lazily and cravenly, drum up separatism as the sole answer to perceived hurts.
Like a child…..go straight to the wailing cry. It’s the fastest way to get what you want Justin. You evidently have been doing this act your entire life.
Actually it is Bob Rae who is at the helm of the LPC, but I doubt his core values are really any different from Trudeau’s. The prime thing that separates Bob Rae from the Dauphin is Bob knows when to keep his mouth shut.
The Liberals will survive in 2015, and will increase their seat count in the House because many Canadians will be utterly turned off by the NDP and feel they have no other party to vote for (the Greens are a non issues until they get rid of Elizabeth May, and even then may need decades to develop as a viable party). Regardless of this electoral success, the LPC still has not demonstrated any vision or policy, so we can expect a mud wrestling match on the Left as the Liberals and NDP fight for the “Progressive” vote.
Since @ 60% of all Canadians vote for “progressive” parties, there is a powerful incentive for the LPC to continue to exist, and an equally powerful incentive for Prime Minister Harper to kneecap “progressive” institutions like academia, the press and the bureaucracy (by cutting funding and eliminating their power to intrude into public life) to ensure the ongoing shift isn’t undone by an election or an unresponsive “establishment” devoted to progressive memes