And they’re off!

The Liberal Party’s leadership contenders, that is. Although some have been quietly organizing for many months. Does that give them an advantage?

Not necessarily. Here’s the LPC race card, so far:

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: She was Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister until Justin Trudeau clumsily attempted to fire her in December, and replace her with the unelected Mark Carney. Livid, Freeland hit back, calling Trudeau’s signature policies “expensive political stunts” – and warning him he faced electoral defeat. She’s been working the phones with Grits ever since. She’s a contender, but can Freeland win? She has two problems. One, she’s still going to be tarred with every Trudeau scandal and misstep. Two, going back to Brutus, history rarely ever rewards the ones who stab their leader in the back (or the front).

DOMINIC LEBLANC: LeBlanc has been the Trudeau government’s Mr. Fix It and is well-liked by most, including Conservative Premiers. He’s worn many hats: LeBlanc has been an advisor to Jean Chretien, held multiple senior cabinet portfolios, and studied at Harvard. Dom, as he’s called, is the son of former Governor General Romeo LeBlanc and was even Justin Trudeau’s babysitter. Some, however, would say that LeBlanc never stopped being Trudeau’s babysitter – and is therefore too close to Trudeau’s many scandals and controversies. Has had a leadership team in place for months.

ANITA ANAND: Telegenic, affable, capable. Lots of ambition – but no name recognition. Currently slated to lose her Toronto-area seat in a big way. Therefore not a serious contender. If you can’t win your own seat, how can you win the country?

FRANCOIS-PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: Frankie Bubbles, as Brian Lilley famously dubbed him, is a centrist Liberal. He is well-respected within the party and represents Jean Chretien’s former Quebec riding. That’s the biggest problem he faces, however: he’s another Quebecer. The Liberal Party has a long tradition of alternating between Quebec and non-Quebec leaders. Many will accordingly say that it’s not Champagne’s turn.

MELANIE JOLY: Joly, like Champagne, is a Francophone Quebecker. That’s a problem. Also a problem: she is arguably the worst cabinet minister in Canadian history, and has energetically destroyed the Liberal Party’s reputation with Jewish voters, likely for good. In the Trudeau government, there is no minister closer to the pro-Hamas position than Joly. If she wins, it’s lights out for a once-great political party.

MARK CARNEY: He’s got the highest IQ, and he’s run big organizations. Born in Canada’s North, fluently bilingual, Carney is clearly favored by Trudeau and his circle. But he’s essentially Michael Ignatieff with a pocket calculator: if you were to look up the word “elite” in the dictionary, you’d see Carney’s high school graduation picture. One upside: if you are getting ready to enter tough negotiations with Donald Trump about debilitating trade tariffs, having the former Governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England representing you is not a bad thing.

CHRISTY CLARK: She may not be the one to beat, yet, but she’s the one the Liberals should pick. She’s brilliant and a scrappy political fighter, and it’s dangerous to underestimate her. Unlike most of the others, too, Clark is an outsider and untouched by the many Trudeau regime scandals. Unlike most of the others, she is a blue Liberal, and actually believes in balanced budgets. Unlike several of the other others, she is a woman who has held the highest public office (Premier of BC) – and it’s well past time that the Liberal Party had a female leader. (They are the only party which hasn’t.) The one who makes Pierre Poilievre nervous.

Other names will enter the race, but mostly just to improve their name recognition. They won’t matter.

The ones above are the contenders. They are the ones to beat!

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Justin Trudeau didn’t decide to resign this week, sources say. The decision was made weeks ago, in plain view. 
 
And few noticed. 
 
It happened on December 18. On that date, Trudeau’s PMO abruptly cancelled interviews with multiple media outlets: Global News, CBC, CTV, Radio-Canada, TVA Nouvelles, along with what was to be a joint interview with CityNews and OMNI Television. The move was unprecedented.
 
Few Canadians understood the significance of that decision. But senior Liberals knew it almost certainly meant the government end of Trudeau’s reign had arrived. 
 
One very senior Liberal, who has years of experience with different Prime Ministers and their offices, said that is the moment when Trudeau had truly decided to go. “No leader has cancelled year-end interviews, ever,” said the Liberal. “They’re a tradition. They’re important, because lots of Canadians watch them. And Justin cancelled.”
 
Trudeau’s behavior in the days that followed did nothing to alter that decision, sources said. Trudeau made a some canned remarks at the Liberal Christmas party on the Hill, and then just a few words to the media after he shuffled his cabinet for the last time. He then got on a Challenger jet and flew to British Columbia to ski. 
 
Few, if any, heard from Trudeau during the crucial days when he needed to be working the phones to save his leadership. Trudeau mainly communicated only with the small circle who remain loyal to him, and with family members. Some urged him to stay and fight.  
 
But Trudeau had no fight left in him. Everywhere he looked, sources said, his prospects were bad and getting worse. President-elect Donald Trump was mocking him on the world stage, calling him the governor of the 51st state. Caucus members – including the crucial Atlantic, Quebec and Ontario caucuses – started to publicly demand that he step aside. And an Angus Reid Institute poll was issued, suggesting that the Liberals had fallen to only 16 per cent support nationally.
 
That’s not all: Liberal leadership campaigns started organizing, more or less openly, and talking to the media – anonymously, of course – about their prospects in the post-Trudeau era. Among them was Dominic LeBlanc, who Trudeau considers one of his closest friends – and Chrystia Freeland, the former Deputy Prime Minister who had dramatically quit Trudeau’s cabinet two days before he canceled his year-end interviews.
 
“He’s human, you know,” said another Liberal insider. “He was down. He asked his circle [of advisors] if there was any way to hold on and avoid a full caucus revolt. They came up with nothing.”
 
“It had nothing to do with Poilievre,” said one Liberal. “He still thinks that Poilievre is a pipsqueak.”
 
But the Parliamentary holiday recess was like bankruptcy, another Liberal said. The process of unraveling is very slow, and then it suddenly reaches its grim conclusion very, very fast.
 
“He knew it was all over,” said the senior Liberal. “His kids were saying to him, ‘Dad, it’s time to go home’.”
 
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The Left is antisemitic.

It was not always thus. The manifestations of Jew hatred – both hardcore (Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Klan, Heritage Front et al.) and fringe (Jim Keegstra, Malcolm Ross, et al.) – were almost always on the Right. Not so long ago, either.

Something changed. For sixty years, the Anti-Defamation League did polling in North America about antisemitism and its malevolent variants. Year after year, the polls showed that young people considered themselves progressive. They passionately opposed racism and antisemitism.

Five years or so ago, there was a shift. Progressive young people still considered themselves anti-racist – but they started to associate Israel with racism.

Israel, young progressives eventually told ADL and other opinion-seekers, was a fascistic, colonial, apartheid state. The reality was otherwise: a quarter of Israel is Arab, and about 45 per cent of the Jewish population is from Africa or Asia. Non-white, in other words.

It didn’t matter, because hate is always disinterested in reality and facts. To oppose Israel was to oppose racism, young progressives told themselves. Every Israel-hating protestor you now see in our streets – every bit of “anti-Zionist” libel you see on social media – can be traced back to that lie: Israel is white supremacist empire, subjugating and oppressing the impoverished, brown-skinned people who were there first.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a renowned Israeli author. He shakes his head when asked about the antisemitism that has now infected the Left and young people in the West, like a virus that defies any vaccine. “There’s been a progression of accusations against Israel,” he says. “Beginning with colonialism, moving to ethnic cleansing, accelerating to apartheid – and now culminating in genocide. And there’s nowhere else to go after genocide.”

“That is their ultimate goal,” Klein Halevi says of those who have persuaded young progressives to embrace a lie. “Because if Israel is a genocidal state, like Nazi Germany was, then Israel becomes incapable of waging a legitimate war of self-defence. Because a genocidal state has no right to self-defence.”

It is not just young people who have been seized with this hateful virus, of course. It is seen everywhere in this country – even with those who have power. Those who, without exception, are on the ideological Left.

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The Left is antisemitic.

It was not always thus. The manifestations of Jew hatred – both hardcore (Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Klan, Heritage Front et al.) and fringe (Jim Keegstra, Malcolm Ross, et al.) – were almost always on the Right. Not so long ago, either.

Something changed. For sixty years, the Anti-Defamation League did polling in North America about antisemitism and its malevolent variants. Year after year, the polls showed that young people considered themselves progressive. They passionately opposed racism and antisemitism.

Five years or so ago, there was a shift. Progressive young people still considered themselves anti-racist – but they started to associate Israel with racism.

Israel, young progressives eventually told ADL and other opinion-seekers, was a fascistic, colonial, apartheid state. The reality was otherwise: a quarter of Israel is Arab, and about 45 per cent of the Jewish population is from Africa or Asia. Non-white, in other words.

It didn’t matter, because hate is always disinterested in reality and facts. To oppose Israel was to oppose racism, young progressives told themselves. Every Israel-hating protestor you now see in our streets – every bit of “anti-Zionist” libel you see on social media – can be traced back to that lie: Israel is white supremacist empire, subjugating and oppressing the impoverished, brown-skinned people who were there first.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a renowned Israeli author. He shakes his head when asked about the antisemitism that has now infected the Left and young people in the West, like a virus that defies any vaccine. “There’s been a progression of accusations against Israel,” he says. “Beginning with colonialism, moving to ethnic cleansing, accelerating to apartheid – and now culminating in genocide. And there’s nowhere else to go after genocide.”

“That is their ultimate goal,” Klein Halevi says of those who have persuaded young progressives to embrace a lie. “Because if Israel is a genocidal state, like Nazi Germany was, then Israel becomes incapable of waging a legitimate war of self-defence. Because a genocidal state has no right to self-defence.”

It is not just young people who have been seized with this hateful virus, of course. It is seen everywhere in this country – even with those who have power. Those who, without exception, are on the ideological Left.

[To read more, subscribe here]

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