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Here’s one thing we know for certain about this week’s federal budget.

It’s going to pass.

That’s a line from veteran NDP strategist Karl Belanger, and it is both (a) true and (b) funny. True, because the Jagmeet Singh New Democrats and the Justin Trudeau Liberals are indisputably, now, the Axis of Weasels – a coalition NDP-Liberal government, wherein the former will keep the latter in power for years to come.

Belanger’s line is also funny, but the joke is on us. Because, if you were hoping for a federal budget that meaningfully improves your life, folks, you’ll need to keep looking. Because the 2022 budget – nominally Chrystia Freeland’s, but really Jagmeet Singh’s – really won’t.

Everyone is anxious and on edge, this spring, and the Three Horsemen of Anxiety are to be seen everywhere, galloping hither and yon: a pandemic that is getting worse, a war in Europe that is getting more horrific, a wave of inflation that is at a 30-year high.

And, if you were hoping the Axis of Weasels budget would truly address any of those things, you will be disappointed. Let’s deal with each Horseman individually.

COVID-19: The Horseman of COVID is rampant in Canada, with as many as 120,000 Ontarians getting infected every single day. The 2022 budgetary pandemic response? To do less, not more. “Our ability to spend is not infinite,” said Freeland, which is news to Trudeau-watchers – and which will certainly enrage the provinces, who desperately need assistance to fund the ongoing fight against COVID. Now.

War in Ukraine: As is well-known, Vladimir Putin is truly a Horseman of the 2022 Apocalypse. To oppose Putin’s genocidal war in Ukraine, Freeland had one job: to meet our NATO spending commitment. Our allies have asked us to do that, NATO has asked us to do that – Hell, Barack Obama appeared in Parliament back in 2016 to give a speech and say that: “NATO needs more Canada.”

Well, pleas from Obama, Ukraine and NATO went unheeded in the 2022 budget: Freeland, Trudeau and Prime Minister Singh could not bring themselves to even meet our piddling two per cent of GDP target. Not even that.

Inflation: The third and final Horseman of the 2022 Apocalypse is inflation, and Freeland at least acknowledged it. Because inflation is picking the pocketbooks of Canadians from sea to sea to sea.

Freeland’s response? To spend even more, thereby pushing inflation ever-upward. Sixty billion more in spending, in fact, with a plethora of housing-related programs, green programs, program programs – and, as the NDP demanded, a new national dental care program.

The result? Around $1.2 trillion in debt, and a black hole where the Chretien-era balanced budgets used to be.

In fairness to Prime Minister Singh, this needs to be said: on Parliament Hill – which is a few city blocks surrounded by reality – far too much fuss gets made about budgets. Those of us in the media, and in cloistered political circles, get really worked up about them, but real people don’t.

Joe and Jane Frontporch – the ones who are buffeted, every day, by the aforementioned Horsemen of COVID, war and inflation – couldn’t tell you three things that were in the last federal budget if you gave them a billion dollars (which Messrs. Singh and Trudeau just might do, if you give them a chance). Because, in Ottawa, it’s always just Ottawa talking to, for, and about Ottawa.

So, the 2022 federal budget will pass, sure. But on the things that matter to real people, living real lives? On the things that matter the most, like COVID and war and inflation?

On those things, the first Axis of Weasels budget did little to nothing.

Which, among other things, is why its authors are weasels.

— Kinsella was a special assistant to Jean Chretien

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We don’t even have to ask.

About whether you’ve got friends and family who have gotten COVID, that is. Because we all know the truth: lots and lots of people are getting it. Everyone is talking about it, all over.

Maybe you’ve gotten it, too. Maybe you’ve got it right now.

Sure, lots of people have dodged COVID for two years. No longer: their luck has run out. And, now, it certainly seems like more people are getting sick than ever before.

COVID-19 — which never really left — is back. With a vengeance.

In Ontario, to cite just one example, it’s estimated that 30,000 people are now getting sick every single day. We have to use “estimates,” unfortunately, because Canadian governments have basically abandoned their obligation to carefully track how many of us are getting sick.

But some things we do know. Here in Ontario, again, 173 patients were in intensive care units on Tuesday — 96 of those patients required a ventilator to breathe. That number is up from last week. Meanwhile, yet more deaths — a total of 12,479 so far. And, tellingly, hospitalizations on Tuesday climbed past the 1,000 mark, for the first time since February.

TRUDEAU’S NDP BUDGET: Will it balance itself?

We can blame governments — of all stripes and at all levels — for what’s happening. But they’re only partly to blame. We’re to blame, too. Because, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we all know one thing has created the sixth wave more than any other.

Too many people have stopped wearing masks.

That’s a big mistake, and we’re now all paying the price. Here’s five simple reasons why we need to resist the temptation to toss out our masks. Clip and save.

They work — to some, even better than vaccines. The director of the Center for Disease Control has testified in Congress that masks have been “the most powerful tool’ in the war against COVID.

“We have clear scientific evidence they work, and they are our best defence,” Dr. Robert Redfield said. “I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.”

Vaccines work, sure. But their effectiveness fades over time. And they don’t cure, they prevent. That’s not all: many people have bona fide reasons for refusing vaccines. But there exists no medical reason for refusing to wear a mask where the circumstances warrant it. Everyone is fed up with masks, of course. But they work. Still.

Masks are logical. COVID, as everyone knows, is spread through respiratory droplets — when a person coughs, sneezes or even talks. Redfield’s CDC says face masks, worn properly, are “particularly important” when you can’t maintain a six-foot distance from someone else. You can still get, and spread, the virus when vaccinated. But if you and everyone around you is wearing the right mask, properly, the risk drops to almost zero.

Is Trudeau A Dictator? Kinsella: It’s Not That Black And White!

Variants come and go. And not all vaccines protect against all variants, either, as we are now experiencing, the hard way. But masks work against every variant to date, and every variant that is coming our way. Whatever their genetic mutations, masks protect against any strain of COVID.

You know masks work. You know it. The outbreaks we are now seeing, everywhere, aren’t because people stopped getting vaccinated — they’re still getting vaccinated, and in record numbers in places like Ontario. It’s not necessarily because we got rid of vaccine passports, either, although that likely didn’t help.

The big change?

People stopped wearing masks. And COVID infections have gotten worse, and are getting worse every day.

The pandemic isn’t over. COVID-19 isn’t done with us. Get vaccinated, if you can. Socially distance and hand-wash, all that.

But don’t toss out your mask. Too many people did — and now too many people are getting sick.

— Kinsella was chief of staff to a federal Liberal minister of health

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So, I’m Catholic.

Irish Catholic, in fact. Every Irish Catholic knows what that means, pretty much. Uncles who were priests, aunts who were nuns, Church every Sunday, the sacraments, all of it.

When they were younger, my four kids came to church with me. Most of my closest friends, like my Sun colleague Brian Lilley, are Catholics too. We talk about it.

Still proud I was taught by Jesuits. Still wear a blessed Joan of Arc medal around my neck. Still went to church when I was in a punk band in Calgary, even, sitting at the back in a biker jacket and wearing a homemade Clash T-shirt.

Still pray every night: Our Father, Hail Mary, Act of Contrition, Glory Be. Every single night. I pray for all of you, even the jerks. (Especially the jerks.)

So I was and am a Catholic. But then I kind of stopped.

The pandemic was part of it, of course. All around the world, churches and synagogues and mosques were forced to close their doors, to prevent the spread of the virus. That was sad, because that was probably the time we all needed them the most.

But if their doors had still been open, I still wouldn’t have gone to Catholic Mass. Because they had kind of broken my heart. And enraged me. And shocked me. And disgusted me.

It was the discovery of those 200 bodies in Kamloops that did it. Children and babies, whose only sin had been to be born indigenous.

And who were stolen from their parents and their families, and taken to prisons — because that’s what they were, really, prisons for children — where they would be beaten and tortured and abused. And sometimes killed.

Thousands of them, dead. And we know that many of them were killed, because they were dropped into unmarked graves, like they were garbage.

Murderers favour unmarked graves. So, apparently, did the Catholic Church.

So I stopped going. Or, at least, stopped believing.

I wasn’t alone. When I wrote about the subject, I heard from many Catholics — friends, family members, total strangers — who had reached the same decision. We had put up with serial stupidities in our church for years. But the residential school genocide? That pushed us out the door.

For me, there was a personal reason, too. My oldest, my daughter, is Indigenous. She is a citizen of a Yukon First Nation. And I love her dearly.

After the revelations came out about what the Catholic Church did at the Canadian residential so-called schools, how could I still be a practicing Catholic, and look my daughter in her beautiful face? How could I be her dad, and still be a Catholic? I didn’t know how to do that.

On Friday, the Pope finally did what long needed to be done: He accepted responsibility. He apologized for what the Catholic Church had done to Indigenous children, the ones from not so long ago. The ones who look very much like like my daughter.

Here is what he said:

“I ask for God’s forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart, I am very sorry, and I joined my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon clearly. The content of the faith cannot be transmitted in a way contrary to faith itself.”

“I also feel shame and I’m saying it now … for the role that the number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had and all these things that wounded you (and) the abuse you suffered, and in the lack of respect shown for your identity and culture.”

Afterword, I talked to my daughter about it. I told her I would be writing this column and that I would be talking about her in it. She said that was OK.

We talked about whether we could go back to Mass. Whether we could feel like we belong to a church that actually practices love, and just doesn’t talk about it.

“Let’s see what the Pope says and does when he comes to Canada,” my daughter said. I agreed with her.

Being a Catholic means being on a journey, not reaching a destination.

Let’s see where the Catholic Church ends up.

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Look, Justin Trudeau is many things.

He’s disinterested in ethics, as evidenced by his appalling conduct in serial scandals — the Aga Khan, SNC-Lavalin, the WE “charity.”

He’s indifferent to real racism, as evidenced by his willingness, as an adult, to wear racist blackface and thereby mock Black people.

He’s dishonest — as seen just last week, when he did a backroom deal to create a NDP-Liberal coalition government, after having repeatedly promised to never do such a thing.

The Liberal prime minister is many, many things. But a dictator?

That’s what a Conservative MP thinks he is. She got up on her hind legs in the House of Commons this week and called him that. Lethbridge’s elected voice in Parliament, Rachael Thomas, said “many Canadians” agree Justin Trudeau meets the dictionary definition of “dictator.”

Now, Thomas didn’t cite any polling or research to back up her claim. We don’t even know if she consulted with the good people of Lethbridge (who this week lost a truly honest and decent representative, former Senator Joyce Fairbairn, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s after many years of suffering).

What Thomas said was neither honest nor decent. It was deeply stupid. Trudeau can be fairly accused of many, many misdeeds (see above). But is it really necessary to liken him to real dictators, like Russia’s monster, Vladimir Putin, or China’s, Xi Jinping? Really?

Now, we shouldn’t be surprised to see this kind of idiocy coming from Thomas. Just a few weeks ago, she was again in the news — for posting an InfoWars-style nutbar video.

In it, Thomas said that vaccinated people were more likely to get COVID-19 (false). She said that taking a daily rapid test was safer than getting vaccinated (false). And she said that vaccines did not protect against the Omicron variant (false).

We shouldn’t, however, get too upset about anything Rachael Thomas has to say. As her province’s premier, Jason Kenney, said about her “dictator” claim: “I disagree with Justin Trudeau on the vast majority of issues. I think he’s been too quick to use extraordinary powers like the Emergencies Act. But for all of that, I think it’s unhelpful and corrosive to suggest that that he operates like, let’s say, the president of China or the president of Russia.”

It is indeed unhelpful and corrosive. And other MPs have done the same sort of thing in the past. Liberal MPs Carolyn Bennett, Hedy Fry and Pablo Rodriguez, to cite three examples, all called a Conservative prime minister “a dictator.”

Along with being inaccurate and stupid, it’s unhelpful. Because, in politics, language is important. Labels, too. As Kenney notes, the strongest criticisms should be reserved for the clearest cases. The most deserving cases.

When everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism. When everyone is a racist, then no one is a racist. When your political adversary is a “dictator,” well, then what’s left to call Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping? You’ve kind of exhausted your political thesaurus, at that point.

Justin Trudeau is, as noted, many things. He is deserving of many criticisms. But he’s not a dictator.

Rachael Thomas, however, has revealed herself to be plenty of things, too.

None of them are good.

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Pierre Poilievre hates Canada’s central bank.

And who doesn’t hate the banks, right? But hating this particular bank while running for prime minister? That’s a big problem.

Because a central bank isn’t just any bank. The importance of it is found on the currency in your wallet or purse: The signatures on those bank notes belong to the governor and senior deputy director of the Bank of Canada. Not politicians.

Some days, we wonder if Pierre Poilievre wants “Pierre Poilievre” inscribed there. Because he sure thinks he’s smarter than Canada’s central bankers.

That’s a big problem, as noted, because the Bank of Canada controls our currency and our money supply — essentially, how much dough is in circulation at any given time. Their main job is stabilizing prices of things.

Central banks also determine interest rates, which is basically setting the cost of money. So, as you can see, the central bankers — who aren’t elected, but are selected by elected representatives — have a very big impact on your life and mine.

Poilievre says the Bank of Canada is “an ATM machine” for the government, which is a lot of crap. He says it’s “more and more political,” which also isn’t true. He supports a private member’s bill that would “audit” the Bank of Canada, which isn’t needed — because it already has auditors on its board.

Now Poilievre isn’t the first politician who wanted to control a central bank. Demagogues do it all the time. Donald Trump attacked America’s central bank regularly, likening it to a dictatorship, a form of government he usually approved of. Globally, Russian allies like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to India’s Narendra Modi have gone after central banks, as well.

It’s like Church and State: Central bankers shouldn’t involve themselves with politics, and politicians shouldn’t boss around central bankers. Because, among other things, politicians shouldn’t be deciding prices. Can you imagine?

But Pierre Poilievre is deeply arrogant, as seen in his repeated claim to be “running for prime minister” – meaning, he sees the Conservative leadership race as a mere trifling. He’s leader already, in effect, and is going straight for 24 Sussex Drive.

But Poilievre’s arrogant belief that he knows better than the Bank of Canada is dangerous. Evidence of that is found in the company he keeps.

This week, Mitchell Thompson at Press Progress published a lengthy investigation into Poilievre’s cozy association with a Bitcoin trader who also trades in COVID-19 conspiracy theories — and who has actually compared central banks to Nazism and slavery.

Last month, Poilievre was the star of Robert Breedlove’s podcast, What Is Money? Poilievre gushed that he often listens to Breedlove “late into the night.”

Poilievre: “I find (Breedlove) extremely informative and my wife and I have been known to watch YouTube and your channel late into the night once we’ve got the kids to bed. And I’ve always enjoyed it and I’ve learned a lot about Bitcoin and other monetary issues from listening to you.”

The rest of us usually go get a stiff drink after wrestling the kids to bed. At Poilievre’s house, they listen to a nutbar conspiracy theorist. Here’s a sampling of what they hear.

• COVID-19 isn’t really real. Instead, “COVID is a government diversion strategy.”
• COVID is “mass formation psychosis.”
• “Hitler would not be a household name if (government-issued) currency never existed … he used fiat currency to fund the blitzkrieg.”
• The World Economic Forum is comparable to “the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz.”
• “Central banking is an institution of slavery. Burn. It The. F***. Down.”

Were the Poilievres concerned with what they heard, post-bedtime? Nope. The Conservative leadership frontrunner told Breedlove he thinks his show — replete with Nazi and slavery analogies — is “extremely informative.”

It is “extremely informative,” although not in the way that Pierre Poilievre wants.

It is extremely nuts.

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Vladimir Putin is going to be 70 years old this year.

He may be the richest man in the world. He may have super-yachts, and Swiss bank accounts containing ill-gotten billions. He may have been victorious in armed conflicts in Crimea, Syria, Belarus, Africa and Kazakhstan.

But he can’t stop the march of time, can he? He can’t outrun death.

Any of us who have hit the milestone birthdays — for punk-rocking me it was 20, seriously — know what all those birthday parties signify. They start to add up. They mean you’re getting a lot closer to the end than the start.

And, predictably, the Russian dictator has frantically attempted to forestall the end. There’s been those vaguely homoerotic airbrushed photos of him shirtless, on horseback. There’s been the staged judo competitions. There’s been the nipping and tucking, evidenced by the fact that his head closely resembles a balloon — a balloon found at one of those aforementioned birthday parties.

Oh, and steroidal Putin’s puffiness and reddish hue, as observed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s staffers, following Macron’s meeting with Putin last month — facing off at opposing ends of a 20-foot-long table in Moscow. Putin didn’t look or sound right, they said. Paranoid, they said.

Because Putin grows old, grows old, per T.S. Eliot. And that, more than anything, is what will ultimately defeat him. Just as you can’t take it with you, you also can’t invade any more countries when you’re dead. Can you?

Because he knows the end may be nigh, Putin is in search of a legacy. All leaders do that. Justin Trudeau, for example, actually formed a coalition government with the NDP last week to give himself enough time to craft a legacy. (Because his only legacy, so far, is serial scandal and serial blackface.)

The New York Times’ Roger Cohen published a magnum opus about Putin’s own legacy hunt on the weekend. Cohen’s piece is as long as a book, but it’s meticulously-researched and well worth reading. It’ll tell you more about Vladimir Putin, and Vladimir Putin’s plans, than anything else out there to date.

Here’s a sampling of what Cohen reported:

• He’s changed. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “I’ve never seen Putin go from a little shy, to pretty shy, to arrogant, and now megalomaniacal.”
• He’s angry. Sylvie Bermann, a diplomat who knew Putin before and after the Soviet Union broke up: “Something happened. He spoke with a new rage and fury.”
• He sees us as weak and decadent. Michel Duclos, head of a French think-tank: “He became convinced that the West was in decline after the 2008 financial crisis. (His) way forward was confrontation.”
• He thinks he’s winning. Former French president Francois Hollande: “Putin tells himself: ‘I am advancing everywhere. Where am I in retreat? Nowhere!’”

And that last observation may be so, for now. While returning Ukraine to Mother Russia has taken more time than anyone thought, Putin has not yet abandoned his obscene, genocidal war. He hasn’t won, but he hasn’t lost, either.

But he has dramatically miscalculated. All the things he most wanted to avoid — a unification of NATO, a stronger European Union, a militarized Germany, a teetering Russian economy, and a defiant Ukrainian people — have now happened.

Over the weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden declared that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” His aides later denied that Biden is seeking regime change in Russia, but the president’s meaning could not have been more clear: He wants Putin gone. Dead or alive. But gone.

He will be. If not via an assassin’s bullet, or a Kremlin coup, or a popular uprising, Putin will be gone.

The Grim Reaper is heading his way, and the Grim Reaper can be delayed.

But never denied.

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The problem with backroom deals is that they don’t stay in the backroom. They leak out.

Also, they don’t just look secretive, they look sneaky. And, because they are done behind closed doors with just a chosen few, they look wildly undemocratic, too.

The Liberal-NDP deal to keep Justin Trudeau in power until 2025 is all of that: Sneaky, undemocratic and, now, public. It transforms Justin Trudeau, minority prime minister, into Justin Trudeau, majority prime minister.

Which isn’t what most Canadians wanted, back in October. But it’s now what they’ll get.

CBC’s Ottawa bureau broke the news, naturally. That PMO-CBC oozy coziness notwithstanding, a Grit-Dipper government is upon the land. An Axis of Weasels, essentially.

Forget about NDP “Leader” Jagmeet Singh, because he is now, officially and deservedly, forgettable. He has folded the once-proud party of Jack Layton and Ed Broadbent into the welcoming arms of the PMO, and his NDP accordingly no longer exists. As in all mergers and acquisitions, it will be followed by plenty of layoffs — of New Democrats. But that will come later.

For now, us mere mortals — you know, the ones who previously thought we were the bosses in this erstwhile democracy — are left to contemplate motive. Which is what everyone does when confronted with a crime scene. Since we know whodunnit, in this undemocratic crime, we are left to ask: Why did they?

This writer counts four possibilities. Here they are.

One, the Liberals are worried about who the next Conservative leader will be. If it were to be Pierre Poilievre, the backroom deal-making wouldn’t have been necessary: Internal Liberal polling apparently shows that the Ottawa-area MP, if victorious, will guarantee continued Liberal hegemony.

Jean Charest, on the other hand, is the Tory leadership contender most likely to hand Trudeau a pink slip. But — even so — methinks the dirty deal wasn’t done for that reason.

Two, they’re having some fun. Former Brian Mulroney chief of staff Norman Spector once told me that the only fun PMO staff have, really, is planning their next international junket — and leaking stories about cabinet shuffles and deal-making. So, there’s that possibility – someone in PMO is making mischief.

But that, too, is unlikely. The Axis of Weasels Deal, which makes the Meech Lake Accord look like a paragon of democracy, is causing big waves already.

Three — and this is more likely than the first two possibilities – Messrs. Trudeau and Singh are planning something really, really big, policy-wise. It may not be nationalizing banks or pharmaceutical companies, but one can be reasonably certain that it will be Big Leftie — dental care, more pharmacare, more everything-care. Cradle-to-grave stuff, print more money, etc.

As evidenced by the near-total absence of Turner-Chretien-Martin-Dion Liberals in his circle, Trudeau long ago ceased to be a real Liberal. So a big and dramatic policy move, lurching far left, is likelier.

Four, and this motive is the most likely: Justin Trudeau is leaving, or wants to. Given his performance in the last federal election (where he phoned it in), and given his recent Instagram-sponsored junkets around the globe (wherein he could just use the phone instead), Trudeau looks decidedly disinterested in the job. Unhappy, too — which is what most Canadians are feeling about him: Unhappy.

An Axis of Weasels dirty deal gives Trudeau lots of runway to cobble together some sort of a legacy achievement, which is necessary in his case: His only legacy, to date, is the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the Aga Khan scandal, and the WE scandal. And lots of missteps and malapropisms that caused us peoplekind to wince.

So, he needs a big legacy thing. And, along the way, it would buy his successor — whomever she may be — sufficient time to clean out the muck in the PMO Augean stables. New leader, new team, new plan, blah blah blah. The usual.

Anyway, whatever the motive — and whatever the consequences — a Liberal-NDP deal is what we’ve got. Justin Trudeau for years and years to come, folks.

Dunno about you, but I need a shower.

— Warren Kinsella ran the Liberal Party’s war rooms in 1993 and 2000.

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