Feature, Musings —10.19.2024 02:17 PM
—My latest: for the love God, go
Dear Justin Trudeau:
Unhappy members of the Liberal Party caucus are reportedly getting ready to send you a letter, asking you to leave. So, several million of us regular Canadians got together to send you a letter, too. Here it is.
We haven’t seen the Grit caucus letter, yet. But, based upon past experience, it’s likely to be 90 per cent flattery and only about ten per cent the subject-matter, which is this: it’s time to go, big guy.
Do we need to persuade you of this? We doubt it. You don’t get to be Prime Minister of Canada by being a total idiot. You can read a poll as well as the rest of us. And the polls – all of them, no exceptions – say that you and your Liberals have been behind the Conservatives by as much as 22 per cent for more than a year. In politics, that’s death row, Justin.
The main reason for your party’s unpopularity isn’t a policy, per se. Sure, Pierre has convinced lots of people that the carbon tax is the reason why every sparrow falls from the sky. After he becomes Prime Minister, however, and people still need to take out a second mortgage to fill up the tank, they’ll realize that “axing the tax” made for a boffo bumpersticker – but killing it wasn’t be the cure for every ill.
No, Justin, it’s not a policy that has reduced the Liberal brand to endangered-species status. It’s you.
Now, we’ve watched you on the job for the past almost-decade. We’ve seen that calling you names and getting angry at you doesn’t work. In fact, it gives you energy. You’re like the Incredible Hulk of Canadian politics: when people come after you, you add muscle mass.
So, we will try a different approach. We will be kinder and gentler, like George Bush Senior memorably once said.
You have nothing left to prove, Justin. You have had three huge achievements. You have a legacy to be proud of.
One, you took the Liberal Party of Canada from third place to a big, big majority. That is something that no other party leader has done in our lifetimes. Circa 2015, the Liberal Party of Canada’s obituary had been written up by just about every member of the commentariat. But you created your own DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN moment, and made the punditocracy look like fools.
Two, separatism did not once raise its head during your time in power. Every Prime Minister, for generations, has struggled with Quebec nationalism and separatism. You, however, led the country through nearly a decade in which, blessedly, we did not hear the word “constitution.” Call it luck, call it skill. Whatever the reason, you kept the Canada-wreckers at bay.
(Tory leader Pierre Poilievre, we note, will not be so lucky. His biggest challenge won’t be cutting back on your fiscal excesses – in government, any monkey can wield an axe. His biggest challenge will be the return of the Parti Quebecois at the National Assembly, and the fact that Quebeckers don’t ever like anglophones telling them what to think. But we digress.)
The third reason why you can leave with your comely head held high: you lifted hundreds of thousands of Canadian children out of poverty. When children are going hungry, when children do not have a roof over their heads, you don’t really have a country anymore. Your Canada Child Benefit (CCB) didn’t fully eliminate child poverty – it will forever be among us, per Jesus Christ – but hundreds of thousands of Canadian children were given better lives. The last time the Tories said they’d “reform” the CCB they lost an election they should’ve won.
So, there you go, Justin: you shouldn’t leave because we’re mad at you (even though several million of us are). You should leave because you’ve had almost ten years at the top, and that’s as good as it gets.
It matters to you, we suspect, that you led minority governments instead of majority ones. But that doesn’t matter to us, your bosses. For most of those years, we were comfortable with you being in charge. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have defeated Messrs. Harper, Scheer and O’Toole.
Anyway: that was then, this is now. It’s over.
You are a proud guy, like your Dad was. In politics, you are only remembered for your last loss or win.
Be remembered as a winner, not a loser. Go. You’ll be happier, and so will we. Everyone wins.
Sincerely,
Canadians
After reading this, I think Trudeau may stay on.
A source in the PMO recorded this conversation of Trudeau to Katie, “Katie, you know deep down Kinsella likes me! Just look at what he says!”
‘You have a legacy to be proud of.’
‘You’ve lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.’
“Katie, I can’t leave now, and leave the country to those nasty cons. I’ve got more to do. Canada and the world needs my shining leadership.”
Trudeau isn’t going. He’s got no where else to go. (And Xi doesn’t want him to leave.)
JT seems more sure he’s going to stay after the most recent caucus meeting. Perhaps if the 24 MP’s had actually signed the letter that may have influenced him; though I doubt it.
He’ll stay. Perhaps if the 24 supposed disillusioned MP’s had all actually signed the letter, that may have influenced him to consider quitting.
The trick will be to paint his legacy as something that might be portrayed as positive…. to make the resignation more palatable….. to ease him into it. Let’s all fold arms, stare at the floor and whisper that something has been accomplished over the past 10 years.
But make no mistake, the Liberal Party of Canada over the past 10 years has been transformed into a despicable engine of shame and disgrace, possibly unmatched in Canadian history.
The ensuing Leadership Convention won’t be so much a renewal as it will be an exorcism / fumigation.
I’m not so sure Justin will listen to reason….. His entire leadership was born out of madness, sustained by desperate people who may never be allowed at the top of a campaign again. I for one expect the madness and desperation to continue…. until the caucus uses their legal power and informs the Gernor General that Canada has a new Prime Minister….. or until the voters make that decision for them in the next election.
“No, Justin, it’s not a policy that has reduced the Liberal brand to endangered-species status. It’s you.”
I partly agree. Number 1 reason is him. Number 2 reason is policy-related, specially Liberal immigration policy since Covid. Latest Abacus poll shows 72% of Canadians think immigration is too high, with 47% thinking it’s ’way too high’. The Liberals can’t easily call 3/4 of the Canadian population racist.
Btw Warren I recently heard a podcaster reference a comparison you once made regarding the treatment of 24 Sussex staff by PMs Harper and Trudeau (given Trudeau doesn’t live at 24 Sussex, I presume you meant at his residence). You said that while Harper would usually encourage staff to go home early in the evening to be with their families, Trudeau often forces them to wait on him and be at his beck and call well into the late night and even early morning. Would be great for you to immortalize that damning comparison – the basic Canadian decency of Mr Harper vs the spoiled brat Trudeau – in a column at some point. Just an idea.
Why am I not surprised.
“Your Canada Child Benefit (CCB) didn’t fully eliminate child poverty – it will forever be among us, per Jesus Christ – but hundreds of thousands of Canadian children were given better lives. The last time the Tories said they’d “reform” the CCB they lost an election they should’ve won.”
I see many people crediting the Trudeau Liberals for the CCB, which I find confusing. It was the Harper Conservatives introduced monthly child care payment for parents of children under 6 after the 2006 election. What Trudeau did was increase the amounts and then yank it away from the middle class so, as usual in Canada, the very people that pay for it are barred from accessing it.
Additionally, record homelessness and food bank usage (up 78% since 2019 according to Food Banks Canada) casts considerable doubt on the government’s child poverty claims.
Also note that increased CCB cheques don’t really leave lower income families better off considering the Liberals have doubled rents and home prices during their tenure. Only those who purchased prior to 2015 (and still remain in their homes) or who moved into a rent-controlled building prior to 2015 (and who haven’t moved since) might be marginally ahead.
Pendant,
Good points.
Our spy in the PMO has obtained Trudeau’s response. “The Canadian Carbon Rebate is putting billions in the hands of Canadians. That’s billions with a B.”
The only people better off after 10 years(and the bulk of Justin’s support) are really well off baby boomers(a lot of them female and a lot of them retired civil servants) who have won the real estate lottery primarily in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, most of whom post nonsense on X. Why would anyone want to throw their lot in with them just by definition? But there aren’t enough of them as we saw in the recent byelections in Montreal and Toronto where the Liberals lost seats they had for decades. I regularly ask in what world should a retired couple get to keep any of their OAS when they make upwards of 350k a year and I get told I am lying(I’m not), get blocked(because no response) or get no reply even when I am answering a direct question.
I’m into little kids. Try and find me.
66.248.200.34
But if Trudeau does go now – who is going to replace him? I doubt that any of the high-profile candidates whose names are being put forward are willing to become the LPC’s Kim Campbell (who took over briefly from a highly unpopular Brian Mulroney and led the Conservatives to near-extinction in the following election).
Took it from third place and if the world is kind back to third place…… or fourth. I guess he should be proud? If he wanted a legacy then as you put it, he should have left long ago. I wonder who his Kim Campbell will be. Baaaa says the sacrifice.
Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves. See it regularly. Even more apropos in this case give that he would not even be memeber of parliament without the name.
“any monkey can wield an axe”. Soft of. If one hopes to get reelected, then wielding a surgeon’s knife is what’s really required. OTOH, any monkey really can throw oodles of money at any and all problems without a scant thought to fiscal prudence.