We've let them in and now they won't leave

This political poster reads, "For a better future, Vote for none of the above"

  

Be careful who you let in your home, you may not be able to get them out; be careful who you elect, you may not be able to get rid of them. For instance, we’ve had Justin Trudeau as prime minister for nine years, that’s three elections, one Trudeau majority and two Trudeau minority governments; he doesn’t care that Canadians don’t want him, Canadians don’t like him, but he won't resign before the next election. One commentator said that Justin Trudeau is "delusional".

Be careful to keep woke and progressive politicians out of office, for them ideology, power, and expediency come before good governance, financial responsibility, and adherence to traditional values. Justin and his progressive cohort have changed this country so that it is unrecognizable, it wasn't this way before he came to office: homeless people are everywhere; more people than ever are visiting food banks; drug addiction is spreading; there is a general loss of morale and growing hopelessness among the population; there is out of control immigration caused by Justin's government and there was no planning for how to house, school, or provide medical services for these people; we have a demoralized, underfunded, and depleted military, gone are the days when we were proud of our military; we have an incompetent government bureaucracy and general incompetence by political leaders; consider the prohibitive cost of buying a home or renting an apartment, no wonder people are sleeping in tents and in shelters; on the world stage Canada is seen as not being serious or trustworthy because Justin Trudeau is not a serious or trustworthy person; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is now second rate and is constantly woke and shallow; we live in fear of losing our family doctors or getting seriously ill because the health system is broken; Quebec is openly and proudly denying civil rights to its English-speaking population with Ottawa’s approval and support; there is out of control antisemitism in our communities and on university campuses, it's a disgrace; promiscuous, and profligate, and ill-thought out spending has doubled our national debt since 2008, it is now at an all time high of $2.1T, that’s correct, it is two point one trillion dollars; Justin Trudeau enacted the outrageous and unnecessary use of the Emergency Act against the freedom convoy in Ottawa; Justin Trudeau enacts legislation for that which we can't afford and that which invades the privacy of citizens: can it get worse than this? Justin Trudeau's government has done more to destroy Canada than any other government since Confederation. This is no longer "our Canada", this is some kind of foreign entity we don't recognize as the country we once loved. I am pessimistic, I don’t think it can be repaired --Justin Trudeau wrecked it-- it should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.

And now, here is the latest example of Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party incompetence: this government has now spent $67M on buying back guns from the population; after about five years not one gun has been bought; that is, $67M spent on nothing but bureaucrats. This is how our tax dollars are being squandered and how the country is being run. 

The Quebec government is destroying our universities

 

The campus at McGill University, Montreal, 1906

One day last fall, in 2023, Premier Legault of Quebec walked out of his Montreal office, which is across the street from the Roddick Gates entrance to McGill University, and decided, as he described it at the time, that he could hear too much English being spoken and, he claimed, this was to the detriment of the French language, and therefore it had to end. And who did he blame for this linguistic pollution? He blamed out-of-province and foreign students although he probably would have liked to have included all English-speaking Quebecers. This was the beginning of the Quebec government's attempt to destroy English language university education in Montreal and Quebec. 

Here is the scenario we were presented with by Premier Legault justifying cutting provincial funding and doubling tuition for out-of-province students at the three English-language universities in Quebec, Bishops University, Concordia University, and McGill University. The money from this drop in funding would go to French-language universities; the three English-language universities would now subsidize the French universities; however, Bishops was later exempted from this attack on English universities. Legault made the situation even worse; out-of-province students would now have to pay a higher tuition fee than they were currently paying (it was doubled but a few months later McGill and Concordia announced they would will subsidize students affected by this) and these students would also have to take French language courses that would add a semester to their studies, courses that are possibly beyond the ability of most Francophone students. Almost immediately applications to study at McGill and Concordia began to fall, the three English-language universities are now subsidizing French-language universities. As well, Moody's downgraded the credit rating of both universities based on Legault's pronouncement.

The gates to McGill University, McGill College Ave, August 25, 1869.

Of course, many of us in the English-language community are in shock over this, it feels like being stabbed in the heart; it is the wilful destruction of what has taken over two hundred years of work, dedication, and commitment to build. It is the legislated cancelling of McGill University and Concordia University, two of our most important institutions. These universities define our community but they have also been a welcoming place of learning for the majority French language community and they have helped generations of immigrants get ahead in Quebec. And it doesn't matter to Legault that McGill is one of three internationally recognized Canadian universities of excellence, the two others are the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto, or that McGill is a 203 year old institution with a reputation for excellence in learning, teaching, and research. Or that McGill is the equivalent of a head office of a prestigious company and brings more revenue to Quebec than it costs to have it here. As for the threat to the French language, based on demography, this is bogus and it's an excuse to attack the English-speaking community; compare the linguistic make up of Montreal or the Province of Quebec in 1976, when the Parti Quebecois was first elected to office with today, and it is obvious that the French language in Quebec is flourishing, and in all respects English is declining. All of Quebec, French and English speaking people, should be proud of McGill for its long history and international reputation; instead, Premier Legault and his cohort see McGill as a bastion of the English community even though about 25% of McGill students are Francophone. There is no reasoning with irrationality, ethnocentricity, and bigotry; no matter what concessions and compromises we make, Legault and his cohort are intransigent about their disdain for anyone who is not Francophone, white, and culturally Roman Catholic.

While Premier Legault blamed foreign students for the dystopian crime of speaking English in public, what he was also attacking was the very existence of McGill University and Concordia University and English-language higher education in Quebec. Here is a hypothetical (but equivalent) situation to what is happening to McGill University, it would be if the premier of British Columbia visited the Vancouver UBC campus and, apparently, just on a whim, announced that he was cutting funding for the University of British Columbia because the student body is more than half Canadian born Asians and 25% of the student body are foreign students; all of Canada would be appalled by this, the situation would be denounced, Federal politicians would be shocked and demand redress; Justin Trudeau would be apoplectic. What we have in Quebec is a racist attack on the English language community, an attack on both McGill and Concordia; it is an attack on our community's history and presence in Quebec. It is an attack on higher education. What Legault wants is a white French speaking province of Quebec that is ethnocentric and isolated from the outside world; if you aren't white and pure laine, then you are not a part of the Quebec nation, they want you gone. But since this atrocity is happening in Quebec, and it is against our English-language community, it is greeted with silence and even applause by our Federal politicians. From them we hear absolutely nothing, it is total silence, they want the French vote in Quebec no matter that it is destroying our community.

Redpath Museum on the McGill Campus, Montréal, QC, circa 1893

And so, we see that the government of Quebec has targeted our institutions, our language, and our history;  Premier Legault's plan is the elimination of the English language in Quebec, whether it is English language signage, all evidence of our extensive historical role in Quebec, or our hospitals and institutions that the English-speaking community founded, or speaking English on the street or, inevitably, speaking English or any language other than French in the privacy of one's home. This is a very dark, dystopian, and shameful period in Quebec and Canadian history.

The wilful destruction of an institution of excellence, based on hate and hubris, is evil. 

Addenda: enrollment is declining at Concordia University due to Legault's defunding English-language universities in Montreal. 29 August 2024.

Read this re McGill's "sustained excellence", https://reporter.mcgill.ca/sustained-excellence-mcgill-tops-macleans-rankings-again/

Our politicians don’t care

2022

Justin Trudeau claims that Canada is in great shape and he and his team are doing a great job running the country. Justin doesn't mention the many homeless people living in tents, shacks, or in their cars, they’re everywhere; or that young educated Canadians are the first generation who will never be able to own a house and can barely afford to pay inflated rents common in cities and towns; or that over 20% of Canadians are dependent on food banks because groceries are so expensive; or that many people live in fear of getting sick because they have no family doctor and will never have a family doctor. It wasn't this way just ten years ago, before Justin Trudeau became prime minister; he has made the country unrecognizable to all of us who were once proud of being Canadians. He is a man who has no interest or belief in civil liberties in this country.

We know that Justin Trudeau doesn't care about civil liberties; just remember his use of the Emergency Act regarding the freedom convoy. As well, he and his cohort have allowed, condoned, and promoted the CAQ government in Quebec to get away with the abnegation of civil liberties, all of it legislated in Bill 96, against the English-speaking community in Quebec; the federal Liberals have even included Bill 96 in the federal Official Languages Act (2022). See no evil and hear no evil is their approach to this situation. Justin Trudeau, and the other federal party leaders, should have had the integrity to oppose Bill 96, but none of them said a word, they supported Bill 96.                                   

Premier Legault and his CAQ party have attacked McGill University, one of Canada's greatest universities, and they've attacked Concordia University, and they would like to see both universities closed down; that is their intention even though they might deny it. Their intention and objective is to destroy the English-speaking community.

The latest aggression against the English-speaking community is an assault on health care for English-speaking Quebecers; they have directed health care workers not to speak English with patients who do not have an eligibility certificate to receive health care in English; however, these eligibility certificates don't exist. Just imagine, this is happening in Canada. I would advise anyone thinking of investing in Quebec or relocating here to think twice, your civil liberties will be annulled, you will face a provincial bureaucracy that will invade every aspect of your business, and you will be taxed to death. 

The following is especially egregious and Orwellian: under Bill 96 the government can enter the premises of a business, with no warrant, at any time of day or night, to see if their computers contain any language other than French. This is bad enough but it is also possible that these government agents, the Language Police, will read and copy private documents on these computers and what will they do with this private information? Is this why Walmart bailed from investing in the province, after building but never opening a $100M warehouse? There are other explanations but I tend towards Walmart wanting to avoid the inevitable invasion of their privacy in terms of operating their business.

Justin and his cohort want the French vote in Quebec and he has condoned and promoted the loss of civil liberties in order to get the French vote. Now read this:

Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects against all forms of unreasonable search and seizure. But for the notwithstanding clause, if a person believed that the Office had violated this fundamental democratic right against State intrusion, there would be legal protections. Under Bill 96, however, there would be no such right. Worse, the Bill does not create a requirement of reasonable grounds, or even reasonable suspicion. There is no requirement for prior judicial authorization of any kind, such as a warrant. And so, there would be no grounds whatsoever to contest what would otherwise be an unlawful search and seizure if the Bill as tabled in First Reading is passed.

                                                        --Pearl Eliadis, Associate Professor, 

                                                       Faculty of Law, McGill University

                                                       "Pearl Eliadis on the Overreach of Bill 96"

There is a cost to whatever Justin Trudeau does, a significant part of the cost is a denial of our individual and collective freedom. What I have said here is what the majority of English-speaking Quebecers think and feel about being abandoned and betrayed by our provincial and federal political parties. They have all sold us out; none of them care about civil liberties. How did we end up in such a situation? How did civil liberties end up meaning so little in Canada? 

Note: this information was correct at the time of writing; it is possible that some details may have since changed. The main thing here is the abnegation of civil liberties in Canada.

The state of Canada is not good

 

Average Canadians regretting what the country has become

Canada today is not what it used to be; we know that all is not well. Justin Trudeau seems to think everything is great, but just look around you and what do you see? In every city and town there are encampments of homeless people on roadsides and in city parks; food banks can't keep up with the number of people visiting them, even the employed visit food banks; average people can no longer afford to buy a home, some cannot afford to rent an apartment; the country is not united, Quebec inches closer to independence and Alberta has its own complaints about the federal government; hospitals are collapsing, we don’t have enough doctors or nurses; Justin has spent us into the highest national debt in our history, it’s in the hundreds of billions of dollars; immigration is at an all-time high (500K immigrants per year in 2021, 2022, and 2023) at a time when Canadian citizens can’t afford groceries or a place to live, many don’t have family doctors, and even the immigrants are leaving; what is going on? This is not the Canada in which I grew up, it is not even the Canada of 2014, the year before Justin was first elected. 

My family have always been Liberals and we've had several Members of Parliament in the family, all Liberals, and elected in Northumberland Riding, in New Brunswick; there was John Vereker Morrissy and his son Charles Morrissy, both were prominent local politicians in Newcastle (now Miramichi) who moved up to the Federal level. We were always supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada, and we were always social liberals, as are most Canadians. We were never conservatives; I listened to the liberal CBC, I voted Liberal, I loved Canada. That has ended since Justin Trudeau came to office.

When Justin was elected prime minister things began to deteriorate; it began in 2015 around the time when the CBC's woke bias became more apparent. But it turned out that Trudeau is a man with no moral compass for whom appearance is more important than intelligence, culture, or tradition; he has no culture, no traditions, no great intelligence and little education.This has been shown on many occasions; he's clever, he’s verbally clever, and he has money and influence behind him, he knows how to exploit a situation for his own benefit.

The state of Canada is not good; the old Canada is gone, and we're stuck with the mess that Justin has inflicted on the country. He is working to destroy our sense of being Canadians and our national unity, he doesn't believe in Canada, he doesn’t like Canada, he wants to throw out the old Canada, his allegiance is to diversity, gender, and wokeness, not to the needs and concerns of average Canadians. His aim is to replace traditions, our culture, our belief in who we are and our future, all for unproved politically correct ideas that will inevitably fail. Personally, I am doubtful we will ever recover from these years of Justin Trudeau; so far, he has worked to destroy the country. Is it any wonder that he is one of  the least popular prime ministers in Canada’s history? The only “sunny ways” Justin has left are in his imagination.

"the nation is divided . . ."

 

The Unicorn Rests in a Garden
(or The Unicorn in Captivity)
by an unknown artist, 1495–1505

When the nation is divided

there is no nation: when history is discarded

the old regret what life has become;

there is no nation when people

have lost belief in the soul; there is no nation

when people are divided and turn on each other;

when the nation turns its back 

on what made it a nation

there is no nation:

    ships don't reach harbour,

    cod fish so plentiful off Nfld's coast are gone,

    the massacre of buffalos, a mountain of bones 

    on a bleak autumn morning,

    flash mobs stealing everything from stores,

    crows, carrion, and crowds of people

    live in darkness, 

    goodness is ridiculed, vulgarity         

    celebrated, macabre faces in clouds, 

    mobs pounding on old people's front doors:

what is old is cancelled

as decreed, as legislated; 

and people love ignorance and renounce

their own culture; 

they are crossing the bridge

cities burn and the ruins 

are ploughed into dust—

                                            11 May 2023

Memory, and how it got that way

 

Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs.

                                                                —George Orwell, Animal Farm 

Forget remembering the old days, most people`s memories don't go back much before nine days ago. In fact, a neighbour tells me that her mother's advice is that if you do something embarrassing, not to worry; after about nine days people will have forgotten what you did. And our collective amnesia and revision of the past is what Justin Trudeau has relied on. Have a former Nazi celebrated in parliament, go on a vacation to Tofino on National Reconciliation Day, get caught wearing black face? Quick! You're an actor specializing in sincerity and people are suckers for apologies, the more sincere the better. Apologize or not, in a few days it will be as though you never did anything embarrassing. 

    The old days of free speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religious expression, and freedom to own property, the public will get used to these being cancelled, they will even thank Justin for deleting them. Forget how things used to be, those old freedoms were dangerous to the collective, they made some people feel unsafe, and they were necessarily cancelled. We never want free speech again because it hurts people's feelings, people who say what they think or they believe in something we don't believe in are often deniers of alleged scientific fact or of the latest compulsory belief.

    Remember when we used to own property? When we wrote letters instead of emails? When we read newspapers printed on paper, it was a record of what had happened, not something digital and therefore deletable, revisable, or denilable. Remember? Remember? Remember? Remember? Is it a false memory? Are you confused? Think back to the way things used to be and what we lost and what we still remember. Remember when we had only two sexes, men and women, that’s gone. Remember values and morality? Sorry I mentioned it. Remember seeing someone walking down the street reading a book, absorbed in reading a book? How many people do you see reading a book anymore? But you will see many people walking down the street looking at their IPhones. "Remember to remember" said Henry Miller. 

    Justin Trudeau relies on people having short memories; remember the way it used to be before 2015 and we had our own thoughts, it wasn't Justin's agenda imposed on the country. Remember 2015, there was Justin walking to Rideau Hall with his cabinet behind him, his wife beside him, they were all smiling and laughing and optimistic and glorying in their good luck, their new power and authority; my God, the hubris was palpable! They were going to change the world, instead they destroyed a country. It wasn't a new beginning, it was the end of what we loved. There was Justin and his wife who was wearing a white coat and directly behind her there was Melanie Joly wearing the same white coat and both women were laughing, what was that all about? And there were others there, men and women, some have since felt the Wrath of Justin and been dumped from cabinet, others have hung in there, and all know the true measure of Justin Trudeau. We, too, know the true measure of the worst prime minister in Canadian history. Now we laugh when we see him, now we don't believe anything he says, now we know he was never anything but a high school drama teacher, no great intelligence or profundity there, just ruthlessness and cunning. All the good people, all the intelligent people, have been deleted or jumped ship from his cabinet to escape the shipwreck Justin would make of the country; and the ones who remain? They are the deluded, the hopeful, and the relentlessly ambitious. 

We don't yet live in Animal Farm but we are headed there, and if we end up at Animal Farm our collective amnesia will make us wonder what the past was really like or if it ever existed, all it takes is nine days and the past is forgotten, deleted from memory. As George Orwell wrote,

As for the others, their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been. . . Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jones's expulsion was still recent, things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember. There was nothing with which they could compare their present lives; they had nothing to go on except Squealer's lists of figures, which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better. The animals found the problem insoluble; in any case, they had little time for speculating on such things now. Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse -- hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.

Justin Trudeau's Canada in 2030

 

Has any other Canadian prime minister ever been photographed like this?

Crystal Ball, oh truth telling Crystal Ball, what is our future as a country?

It's not good. Just extrapolate from what Justin Trudeau has done to the country since 2015: our standard of living has declined; numerous homeless people are in every city and town; if you are young you have probably already given up ever owning your own home; the cost of food is prohibitive; and on it goes. This is our present, but worse lies ahead.

Let's pretend: Justin survives as prime minister for the next two years and, in 2024-2025, he is re-elected with a majority government. And then we have another four years of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. What will Canada be like in 2029-2030 when Justin is old, wrinkled, and grey? 

1. There is no way you'll ever own your own home, that ended back in 2022. We will be a nation of renters. Lease your electric car, rent your apartment, own nothing, not even the clothes you're wearing. You'll be living in the fifteen minute city so, assuming you have a job, all you'll need is an electric bicycle, your skateboard, a new pair of shoes, or a walker.   

2. Even if you want a road trip somewhere, a family vacation, don't expect to drive very far, your rented electric car has to be charged and there are few places to do this; your electric car doesn't have great mileage; expect the grid to have regular blackouts as it can't handle our increased demand for electricity. And in our cold winters your electric car loses 30 percent of its warmer weather mileage; you won’t be going far. 

 3. The government, and government funded school boards, will have final authority on important issues in your child's life. They see parents as the enemy of the new state they are creating. 

4.Justin has us in conflict with China and India. The conflict with India seems dubious; it is convenient that Justin has announced this latest crisis just when his popularity is at its lowest. As they say, "never waste a good crisis"; they also say: "if you don't have a crisis, invent one."

5. And there was the Emergency Act that was never needed. Covid mandates showed us the future that Justin Trudeau has in store for whoever doesn't follow his party line. 

6. Justin is a terrible manager of government, nothing is thought out in advance; if something fails he just spends his way out of the mess he's created. There are many examples of government incompetency under Justin. For example, our population is exploding, a million immigrants per year, the highest in the western world. Our population is now 40M, it will be 47M by 2030 and 50M by 2050. This is happening at a time when Canadians can’t find affordable housing and our hospitals are collapsing.

7. Visit any Food Banks lately? With inflation and our poor economy food banks will be a part of daily life.

8. Quebec controls immigration into Quebec, punitive language laws, provincial taxation, and Quebec is increasingly a separate political jurisdiction in Canada. The Federal Bill C-13 and Quebec's Bill 96 work in tandem to end the presence of the traditional English-speaking minority in Quebec. Justin doesn’t care whose rights he destroys.

9. Not feeling well, depressed, no money, homeless? Then maybe it's time to take advantage of doctor assisted death. Under Justin, many Canadians now see euthanasia as a solution to homelessness and poverty. 

10. Need a family doctor? Family doctors are increasingly a thing of the past; many Canadians don't have a family doctor, or they are losing their family doctor, or they can't find a new family doctor. 

This is the short list of how Justin has worked to destroy the country; there are other examples of Justin's vision of a future that is now being imposed on us. It is relentlessly dystopian, woke, and progressive.

I suggest that we need a "special rapporteur" to investigate the Justin Trudeau regime. We need a royal commission on Justin’s disastrous years in office so that they are not repeated.                                    

Crystal Ball, oh truth telling Crystal Ball, is this our Future?

You will only make it worse

 

A curious counterintuitive thought: is it possible that reforms -- legislation, laws, things that liberal people believe -- have ended up worsening rather than improving society? Did progressive legislation end up worsening more than it helped? To paraphrase John Cage, don’t try to improve society, you’ll only make it worse. 

———

Is what we have now, a divided society, with homeless encampments in every major city as well as in smaller cities, towns, and rural Canada, an increase in drug addiction and mental illness, the absence of rental units so that rents have increased and renters live in fear of both rent increases and losing where they live, the inflated cost of food a constant worry to average people, hospitals collapsing, is this what reforms have ended up producing; we plug holes in the dike and bigger new holes appear a few feet away.

———

Consider our present dysfunctional, divided society, and the future dystopia, did anyone envisage this future for Canada? Things seem worse; "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; /Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world". The government and well-meaning people find the answer to social ills in more government intervention in people's lives, they want to keep us "safe", a favourite word of Justin Trudeau; Justin always wants to keep us safe, but for one group to be "safe" another group is oppressed. 

———

Surely the 1950s must have been much worse than today. But were they? Remember the film The Hours in which Julianne Moore played Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife; she hated her life, she was a prisoner of that life, but reflecting on the character Julianne Moore played, we see her as a very unpleasant and selfish person, not someone to feel sorry for. We sympathized with her feeling entrapped by her life, conformity weighed heavily on society; she must have been oppressed by an angry and abusive husband as feminists have portrayed men. It was the 1950s so it must have been the way Hollywood portrayed it; Hollywood doesn't lie. But we also see that the cause of Julianne Moore`s character's anxiety was herself, she placed herself first, not her husband, not her son; nobody came first but her. What about Laura Brown's life was so bad? She had a house in suburbia, only one child, a young son who loved her, a husband who loved her and who wanted to please her, a next door neighbour who was supportive of her. And what did she do? She ran away one day, she deserted her son and husband, to the applause of many people watching the film; Laura Brown claims she chose life over death. Too bad for her son who was traumatized by her abandonment of him. (Did one or both of your parents abandon you or said they were leaving you when you were a child? Consider the depth of trauma abandonment, or death of a parent, causes in a child.) Then she lead a life of her own, maybe in a room of her own, probably reading Virginia Woolf's novels, maybe she read Mrs. Dalloway, and her son, who became a poet, committed suicide, he jumped from his loft window. His mother showed up for his memorial service. The perceived judgement, promoted by Hollywood films, is that the 1950s were deadly to the soul, to the spirit; the homogeneous society, the suburbs full of boring white people, the houses like little boxes "all in a row", were soul destroying, as Pete Seeger sang. 

———

And then we turn to today's society. Christianity is laughed at, rejected, or hated; the Bible is said to be hate literature and the progressives want parts of it censored; values are laughed at; marriage as an institution is being abandoned; our prime minister and others want school boards to have more authority over children than the parents of these children; medically assisted suicide has become another part of our health care system, the Hippocratic oath and the moral authority of our physicians is of little importance; freedom of speech has been compromised or limited; we live in a cancel culture society; meanwhile, there are encampments of homeless people in every city and town, in every state and province; an increasing number of these homeless people are dying of overdoses of fentanyl, mental illness is common; legalized gambling is a source of income for a money hungry government; we can’t house our own citizens and we let in millions of immigrants, does the government do any research before acting, do they ever think anything out? Is this what we wanted when we tried to improve society, piecemeal, with endless legislation? We forgot that what you change may not necessarily improve society, it may make society worse. We forgot that when the old is discarded it will never return. It is our collective hubris writ large. 

———

After eight years of Justin Trudeau's time in office Canada is in worse shape than it has ever been; this is what happens when someone is elected based on appearance and not on substance, when someone's progressive and woke values trump common sense legislation and frugal management of taxpayers' money; whatever Justin has done will eventually be discredited, it has already begun. Justin Trudeau's legacy will be that he was a wrecking ball, he is the Miley Cyrus of Canadian politics, he wrecked the country; we are now a society of debtors, a society without common values, a society where our politicians are always expedient and rarely insightful (look at them in the House of Commons, it is embarrassing, they are like braying accusatory children who have been spoiled rotten by their parents). 

Monsters of power and bureaucracy

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

I think it was back in the fall of 1983 when I arrived at Newfoundland's St. John's International Airport to give a reading from my new book, Divisions (Coach House Press, 1983) at Memorial University. I remember that when I arrived there was a group of people greeting what appeared to be a man of some importance from Ottawa; the following year, 1984, was the terminal year for Pierre Elliot Trudeau's government. I wondered about how solicitous they were and my intuition told me this was no ordinary bureaucrat, this was a man with power, someone who had to be dealt with with kid leather gloves.  And that's what happens to a government when it's at the end of its life, privilege and entitlement have settled in and become obvious, the self-importance of people is obvious, and monsters of power and bureaucracy are obvious. There are some of us with hypocrisy radar, we see it, we hate it, we condemn it. 

    The times they are a changing, or so they say, and you can't stop time, change, or  whatever the future holds; as Heraclitus wrote, "You can't step into the same river twice", if the river is the water in the river then it is always changing, even the river banks are subject to erosion and change. Justin Trudeau was never Pierre Elliot Trudeau, he doesn't have his father's intelligence or his education; Trudeaumania doesn't apply to Justin however much Justin craves popularity. I keep hearing people saying, usually about climate change, that we are in an "existential" crisis; but we are also in another existential crisis, that the existence of our values, our traditions, our way of life, is threatened by progressives and the woke. These people, including Justin and his gang of politicians and the people who run the CBC, don't think we even have any Canadian values, traditions, or a way of life, and that is a big part of the problem in this country. As always, you have two types of people: those who want change even though they either have no idea where it will take us, or it will take us somewhere the population doesn't want to go, and you have other people who want to conserve the best of the past and they see the Liberal government destroying what made Canada a great country in which to live. 

    In the first half of the 20th Century Argentina was one of the most prosperous countries in the world with one of the highest GDPs. What happened? A military coup  d'état happened, political instability happened, and Argentina has never recovered her former affluence. Is it possible that  Canada is the next Argentina? We are already not as well off as we were before Justin was elected: our standard of living is declining; home ownership is impossible for the average person; Montreal used to be a renters market, rents here and across Canada are now prohibitively high; food is very expensive; homelessness has increased; drug addiction has never been worse than now; the medical system and health care is collapsing; medical assistance in dying, doctor assisted euthanasia, is now a part of our health and social care, and death is sometimes offered to people who, with a little help, could return to living useful lives; the population has swelled to over 40 million in the name of increasing the number of workers in the country; Justin has denigrated the military and Hockey Canada, it is obvious that traditional male dominated activities are suspect and foreign to him; he has normalized and imposed political correctness on the country; he has worked to destroy freedom of speech in Canada, he promotes cancel culture; he has promoted woke and progressive causes that are essentially opposed to traditional Canadian values; he has betrayed English speaking Quebecers and our constitutional right to use our language; he does not adhere to the truth, so he's a liar; he is a narcissist; in sum, he is not a serious person and he has made us look like we, as a country, are not serious. 

    Why would anyone think that the Justin Trudeau years have been anything but a disaster? So, if Pierre Poilievre is abrasive it is not only that his personality is abrasive or that he is politically ambitious, it is because he can clearly see the damage Justin has inflicted on the country. How did Justin do it? He spent us into debt that we, as a nation, will never see paid off; he is a poor manager of both the economy and the government; his causes are gender fluidity, diversity, and climate change, he is truly woke and progressive; and he comes from a class of people who are rich and careless and spend their way out of every mess they create, but he's spending his way out the mess he's created with our money. And the country is a broken mess because of the disaster of Justin Trudeau.

Living in the fallen state of Canada

Diogenes searching for an honest person in Athens

 

One day in the early 1980s I was watching soccer on television with my old friend Reg Skinner, this was at his home in Blackwater, Camberley, UK; when the occasional goal was scored the crowd roared its approval and the players jumped into each others' arms, they were jubilant. Reg, who was in his early 70s, was critical of the effusive emotion. "They never did any of this emotional celebrating over a goal in the past," he said, "they scored and that was it." But this is the way of today's world; we have moved from an introverted world to one that is extroverted and emotionally demonstrative. Now, it's the optics that counts, how it looks, and how it looks is meant for the media, the media wants bigger than life people because exaggerated acts, or acting, comes across better in the media; so we have people jumping up and down when called to be on The Price is Right, high fives and fist bumps, even rolling on the ground as though about to break dance; is this for real? Are they really this happy?  We also have the political class, they will do anything for a vote, including glad handing, huge smiles, laughing and back slapping, lying, prevaricating, making outlandish promises, doublespeak, and kissing babies; now we see Justin running along the side of the street during a Pride parade taking selfies with whoever is sitting there, what a surprise that must have been for these people, he was even wishing a toddler "Happy Pride Day!" Substance doesn't matter, appearance means everything. 

    Image over reality is what is important in politics; Pierre Poilievre removes his glasses and puts on a black T-shirt and we have a new younger contemporary Pierre Poilievre and the stodgy, cranky, critical, and abrasive Pierre is forgotten. I wonder, when did the extroverted prime minister first appear on the scene? Does the public really love a fat man with blonde hair who will build 1950s suburbia on the greenbelt outside of Toronto in 2023? These politicians are men and women for whom caricature is easy; once we had comics, like Rich Little, who could do impressions of these people and their unctuous personas; but impersonation is a dying art, the public have short memories and no longer know who the comic is satirizing.

    Perhaps the oversize politician as celebrity began in Canada with Pierre Elliot Trudeau; we used to be a fairly introverted country, we used to have respect for each other and most of the time this is still true. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was hated in the west, celebrated in the east, and then after years of a rose in his lapel, jet setting with the the stars, a wayward wife, sex with the stars, we were all happy to see him go. We said about him what divorced men say about their ex-wives, "Thank God they're gone!" We also had Brian Mulroney, easily caricatured because of the Jay Leno jutting chin, baritone voice, and singing Danny Boy onstage with Ronald Reagan, the press lapped it up; and we had Stephen Harper, he had negative charisma which might be a kind of charisma, shaking hands with his children as they left for school, a wooden Charlie McCarthy man with no sense of humour. And now we have the son of the Trudeau dynasty, Justin Trudeau, fallen in the polls but not gone.  It's the age of the prime minister as president, or as dictator, the age of polls determining policy, the age of ego, the age of emotion before substance, the age of inevitable failure, the age of integrity fallen to the age of greed and ambition. I think of Joyce Weiland`s quilt in the National Gallery of Canada, quoting Pierre Elliot Trudeau, "Reason over passion", but that was then and this is now. 

    The media and social media emphasize image over substance, and image always includes promoting one's self. An honest person will be like Diogenes who walked the streets of Athens looking for an honest man. But other people are not our problem, most people are still normal people, they may not be as honest as Diogenes would have liked but they're still our people; it is politicians who have power over us who are the problem, and to find an honest politician is bordering on impossible. Diogenes would weep.

Morrissy Bridge in better days

    And so I turn to former Prime Minister MacKenzie King and his diary that is available online; diarists are by nature introverted and thoughtful people, politicians are by nature ambitious and extroverted. There are even several entries regarding us Morrisseys in MacKenzies' diary, two entries refer to John Veriker Morrissy and his son Charles Morrissy, both Members of Parliament for Northumberland riding in New Brunswick, and there is an entry for Dr. Herb Morrissy. Dr. Morrissey is a family hero, a medical doctor who studied at both McGill University and Cornell University in the 1920s; my grandmother had a postcard in her sideboard showing the Morrissy Bridge in Newcastle, NB, the now rusting and closed down Morrissy Bidge named after John Veriker Morrissy. In the late 1990s I was contacted by Dr. Morrissy's daughter, Jane Morrissy Allan, and I met her when she visited here a few years later. I learned a lot about our family's history from Jane.

    Here is what Prime Minister MacKenzie King writes about the Morrisseys (spelled Morrissy by family in New Brunswick). A final entry in King’s diary regarding the Morrissys occurs on Tuesday, 29 July 1930, just days before the generalelection of 7 August 1930. King is in his office talking with “Bennett”, probably R.B. Bennett, his opponent in the Federal election and the Conservative prime minister from 1930 to 1935. It is impossible to conceive this kind of informal meeting happening today. King begins by making some comments about Bennett’s appearance, “he looked pretty well but is heavier and flabbier I thought.” King continues, “he then said something our having preserved the amenities & not attacked each other… I told [him] I thought I had been most careful, but that I thought he should not have brought in references to myself & the war in which rearoused & perpetuated prejudices that were most unfair…” Then, they discussed specifics of the campaign, King writes: “That New Bruns. he had counted on giving us 2 seats, that in Northumberland he thought his home appeal to sentiment etc. counted very much. I said Morrissey being drunk during prov’l fight & not getting nomination made him disaffected. He said when he was there Morrissey was working for us, & Burchill was the best possible candidate, he put that constituency [?] down to his own appeal…”

    Then, King quotes Bennett as discussing “the hideousness of drink, the curse it was, how it ruined men’s moral sense & judgment, I told him Cahill’s loss of Pontiac was I thought due to this, & we had lost several seats by personal rows, etc.” This explains something of the negative side of Charles Joseph Morrissy who, like his father, seems to have been a heavy drinker. On the positive side, for King, both John Veriker Morrissy and Charles Joseph Morrissy were influential at the provincial level and in their particular ridings; they not only had numerous political contacts but they were intelligent and hard-working men, dedicated to the Liberal Party.

    Other politicians descended from or who had familial ties with the descendants of Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan are Edward Matthew Farrell, a half first cousin of John Veriker Morrissy. Senator Farrell served over twenty-one years in the Canadian Senate, from 12 January 1910 to 6 June 1931 when he died. He was born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, on 31 March 1854 and died on 6 August 1931; he worked as a publisher and printer before his appointment to the Senate on the advice of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, later Sir Wifrid Laurier. George Roy McWilliam, a great nephew of John Veriker Morrissy, was born in 1905; he won seven federal elections and served almost nineteen years in the House of Commons for Northumberland-Mirimichi riding. He died on 15 May 1977. 

    Well, that was then and this is now, living in the fallen state of Canada. 

The carelessness of the rich

 

Some of the many disguises worn by Justin Trudeau

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is not the "great American novel" but it is a great short novel, and Fitzgerald's writing is flawless. His insights into human nature are brilliant; he knows of what he writes, he knows the class of wealthy, careless, selfish people. One of the themes of The Great Gatsby is the carelessness of the rich, they are depicted as being entitled and privileged people who really don't care about anyone but themselves, they leave behind them a trail of broken promises, disappointment, and death. These are people who inherited their wealth, they didn't work for it. 

    Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative opposition in parliament, was not born to wealth like Justin Trudeau; Pierre Poilievre can be abrasive, he is too abrasive for the liberal white middle class of the GTA, Ottawa bureaucrats, CBC administrators and announcers, and other city folk who are progressive; they don't like abrasive people who disagree with them. Justin is suave and handsome and comes from a dynastic family, the son of a former prime minister and on his mother's side other prominent politicians; he was identified as a future prime minister by the Liberal Party of Canada from when he eulogized his father. I watched Pierre Elliott Trudeau's funeral on television, it was in 2000, and when Justin stood beside his father's casket and was introduced to the public I knew this was a future prime minister, he was to the manor born. But I also knew that Justin hadn't written his own speech and I doubt he knows the Robert Frost poem from which he quoted, "The woodshed are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, /And miles to go before I sleep, /And miles to go before I sleep." Even then you could see that he is a man without depth, a man who lives on the surface of life; and he still lives on the surface of life, recently at the Pride parade in Charlottetown, there he was, running along the sidewalk and shaking people's hands, taking selfies; there is no gravitas about him, there is only the occasional appearance of faux gravitas.

    Despite the negative way Poilievre is depicted on the CBC he is a man of possible depth and thoughtfulness, but maybe this is wishful thinking on my part; there was no silver spoon in his mouth when he was born; good people nurtured him and he seems to have good values. But he is not totally to be believed or followed, he is still a politician and full of ambition; neither Justin Trudeau nor Pierre Poilievre are particularly popular among average Canadians. Poilievre has already sold out the English-speaking people in Quebec as he lusts after the French Quebec vote, and the Liberals did the same. The progressive CBC and the liberal media condemn Poilievre and everything he stands for. Meanwhile, Justin maintains his progressive message despite the country being in the mess that he created; he doesn't care about the middle class who are experiencing what he has done to Canada, a country that is now woke and progressive and poor. "Go woke, go broke", as they say . . .

    Today, many Canadians can't find affordable housing; their children will never own their own homes; more people than ever are homeless; food banks are being used by people who used to donate to food banks, not use them; food has never been more expensive than it is now; our medical system is collapsing; crime rates are increasing; in sum, the country is on a downward slide. The rich are getting richer and the rest of us are getting poorer, and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Canada has never been in as bad shape as it is now, and Justin took us here in only eight years. I believe that Justin's emphasis on progressive woke ideology is inconsistent with Canadian values; woke values displaced a more practical management of the economy. But Justin is solidly committed to woke ideology and only tenuously committed to balancing the books, good administration, and serving the Canadian people, and he has failed the country because of this.

    Justin has also alienated the few cabinet ministers who were serious and decent people, not just ambitious politicians; I refer to Judy Wilson-Raybould and Marc Garneau, they cringe when they hear his voice, they regret ever having known him, and the politicians that remain, for instance Freeland, Mendocino, Joly, and Lametti, will do anything to remain in power. As well, Justin has been kept in power by the leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, who doesn't see the contempt in which Justin holds him, or the contempt many voters now feel for Jagmeet because of this. 

    Despite the costumes he wears, the rich boy antics, the inconsistencies, the profligate spending, Justin does have a core personality, it is made up of two things: the promotion of woke and progressive values and a narcissistic hunger for power. To this end he has spent us into hundreds of billions of dollars of debt. He is used to a life of wealth and comfort, never any worries about money, and a subsequent carelessness in his behaviour. I don't know if the country can survive Justin's years as prime minister, years of carelessness, years of waste, years of progressive ideology; Canadians know that the values that will sustain a person--and a nation--are conservative values, these include decency, respect, and trust; meanwhile, Justin promotes diversity, equity, and gender fluidity, values that are not primary to Canadian values and history.

Justinius, Emperor of Canada

Our leader, Justin Trudeau

It will be decades before the country recovers

from Justin Trudeau's years in office, before the debt accrued

is behind us, over 500 billion dollars debt in seven years,

and his woke values—diversity, equity, and gender fluidity—

aiming to destroy values like decency, respect, and trust,

values that sustained the country during Depression and wars;

we have been weakened & betrayed by a man with no moral center,                                                                    a man entitled and privileged by his birth,

a man with no adherence to truth.

               

1

Justinius, he is the Emperor! His refrain and legacy

is that he kept us safe! He insists what citizens want is to be safe

and his government will make us safe, but always under more government

control; he has a cure for aches, pains, arthritis, the common cold,

and unwanted pregnancies: his compassion is great, he will end people's

suffering with medical assistance in dying for all, for the sick, the old, the military,

the mentally ill, even sick children may one day be euthanized; David Lametti,

the Justice Minister: "Extending medical assistance to people with mental illness

'remains a top priority for our government'." (17 December 2022).

A woman who had been in an apparently pro-euthanasia ad (on TV),

in fact she "couldn't find healthcare, applied for medically assisted death

out of desperation after failed attempts to seek appropriate care" (6 December 2022);  

And: "Recent years have seen a growing number of institutions treating

medical assistance in dying as a normal component of the country's

medical system" (22 December 2022). The public have been deceived, 

"One third of Canadians are apparently fine with prescribing assisted suicide 

for no other reason than the fact that the patient is homeless" and "51%

endorsed 'inability to receive medical treatment' as sufficient reason

for assisted death" (18 May 2023); what has our country become?

It's Canada under Justinius's rule. you can't make up how diabolical

the country has become . . .

 

2

There is no complexity to Justinius, human complexity has been replaced

by his single desire: to be a celebrity. He's Justinius, son of Pierre,

heir to the Dynasty. He's the Selfie King, dressing up in costumes,

wearing black face, dancing the wild fandango from Mississauga to Mumbai,

from Surrey to Delhi. Pierre the Elder pirouetted behind Queen Elizabeth

(nothing is extemporaneous with these people, nothing is honest; integrity

does not exist for these people); in London for the Queen's funeral, Justinius

left the hotel's piano lounge door open, and loudly sang "Bohemian Rhapsody",

it was all see me see me see me, look at me look at me look at me; and there he was,

smiling in T-shirt, shallow and vacuous, in whom gravitas never existed,

it's all phony with Justinius; not a word spoken by this man is true.

His hotel room cost taxpayers $6,000. a night, while Canadians

economized, lived on the cheap, worried about job security, some ending up homeless and

unemployed, and we all saw the country decline. He will spend us into Third World status,

money means nothing to Justinius, he is the profligate son of money and entitlement.

 

3

You can't make up what Justinius has done to destroy the country:

increasing numbers of Canadians are homeless, living on the streets, in parks,

back alleys, bus shelters, and sleeping under tarps in winter; drug addiction

is an epidemic; rents have doubled; home ownership impossible for most Canadians,

they can't even afford an apartment in any major city (so what does Justin do?

he lets in to the country 500K immigrants, push the population passed 40M);

the medical system is broken, doctors and nurses are fleeing, hospitals are collapsing;

massive debt and out of control inflation; the cost of groceries prohibitive;

the mismanagement of the everyday running of government; thousands of people

camped out overnight in long lines to get a passport; three out of ten worst airports

in the world are in Canada; out of control government spending and out of control

national debt; an entitled and privileged prime minister selling out minorities;

he'd be El Generalissimo with epaulets and phony medals if he could,

if he wanted, maybe he does.And this is just the beginning of the list . . .

            Justinius doesn't care about anybody: consider his Covid mandates, 

his love of Communist China, his admiration for Fidel Castro. 

As part of the Emergencies Act, bank accounts of the Freedom Convoy members 

were frozen—but then how to pay rent? Buy groceries? Medication?—it was petty 

and punitive and unnecessary; it was the authoritarian act of an authoritarian bully. 

At every chance he repeats his lies about the Freedom Convoy; he has no love of freedom 

and to hell with our Constitution, for what the Constitution is worth.

            It's all psychology with Justinius, he's the narcissistic son copying and one-upping his famous 

father; while Pierre stood up to the thugs who threw bottles at him at a St. Jean Baptiste parade, 

Justinius hid during the Freedom Convoy; Pierre had the War Measure's Act

so Justinius had to have the Emergencies Act.

            Re. the inquiry into the Emergencies Act:

"The Ontario Provincial Police intelligence unit never found evidence demonstrating that the Freedom Convoy posed a direct threat to national security before the unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act was invoked by the federal government" and they "saw no direct threat in the convoy" (21 October 2022), and neither did CSIS;  there was no right wing American money funding the Convoy; the Freedom Convoy was never Canada's January 6th insurrection; there was no desecration of monuments, this was made up by the CBC and used to convince people that the Convoy was dangerous; it was a peaceful if inconvenient demonstration; it was a festival of freedom.

 

4

You can smell the decomp in Ottawa from sea to sea to sea, but you won't hear about it

on the CBC; Justinius has friends at the CBC, he pays their way, $1.5B a year

(visualize a beached dead whale, bloated double in size with decaying matter and gas, decomposing on 

a deserted beach). The CBC's mandate betrayed, now they're full-time

social justice warriors; climate change, gender fluidity, and diversity—no wonder they fail in both 

ratings and entertainment—, but who needs a large audience when they have an unlimited subsidy from 

taxpayers? If no one watched the CBC would the CBC care? They don't care,

they have Justinius on their side; Justinius who is destroying what it took Canadians

150 years to build; he's working on destroying our history, our freedom, our values, our culture;                                                                                                 the country

                                                                                                made over

                                                                                                in his image;

                                                                                                it will be decades

                                                                                                before the damage

                                                                                                caused by this man

                                                                                                is behind us.