01.25.2017 10:43 AM

Trudeau shows guts (and smarts) in my hometown

Watch this. Impressive.


17 Comments

  1. cynical says:

    Impressive. He’s the unHarper. I cannot conceive of Mr.Harper standing up in front of a partially hostile crowd like this, as bright as the man is.
    Mr.Trudeau might be inconsistent, and naive, but he’s got a long way to go to lose my vote.

    Technical note: When he’s speaking on something he cares about and is well prepared, not speaking from a text, the “umhh” disappears.

  2. Lori K says:

    The umm part drives me crazy, but i completely agree with your take on this. LPC have to know there’s oil sands organizers in those townhalls in prairie audiences, out in BC, the NDP will have anti oil crowd, walking the fine line between both, but also clearly laying out the pragmatic balance of environment and oil sands.

    • cynical says:

      I guess I’m now a Liberal, because I think this middle ground is where we should be. I have huge sympathy for people living in areas where the economy is so sensitive to the boom-bust cycle. I live in coastal BC, and am also a bit of a Green. Living here, you can’t avoid it.

      Mr.Trudeau was taking flak for a) being a Trudeau and having the temerity to visit Alberta and talk to actual citizens b) working with Ms. Notley, who’s been trying to actually negotiate on behalf of Albertans with the rest of Canada instead of whinging about how left out Alberta is, and c) oil prices, as we know Notley and Trudeau personally intervened in the world market just to piss of Albertans.

      Fortunately, many Albertans are starting to see through the age-old “Blame Ottawa/The Liberals/Left Wingers/” rhetoric. They’ve been had, repeatedly.

      I had a long conversation with my cousins from Red Deer, now retired. Life long PC voters. “Notley’s not doing so badly, you know!” Not social conservatives, very well travelled, both well educated. No time at all for the Reform or its ilk.

      Interesting times.

  3. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    The PM sure knows how to stand his ground. I think he has the right mix about promoting our oil sands and market diversification and also preparing for the inevitability of serious climate change.

    However, I would like to see the energy producing provinces and territories come to a common agreement with the federal government about the timetable for green energy expansion.

    • Kelly says:

      The feds and provinces won’t decide on timetables for green energy expansion. The market has already decided and GM just launched a game changing electric car. China is driving solar and Europe wind. These technologies are already market competitive. Canada is falling way behind. Other countries will own the patents and we will be left will billions of barrels of uneconomic unsold oil. The oil I dusted knows this which is why they want to produce as much as they can whole they still can. In 20 years the resource will be uneconomic and worthless . . . assets stranded for ever.

  4. Charlie says:

    Albertans are either extremely dumb and can’t be bothered to educate themselves or are so incredibly fragile that their emotions are governed by entitlement.*

    Firstly, PM Trudeau has approved 3 pipelines for construction. With Keystone already there and approved by the US, that will be four pipelines in Canada pumping Alberta oil to foreign markets. That would be 4 active pipelines more than Stephen Harper’s Conservatives ever achieved in their 9 years in government. If there is a criticism to be levelled at Trudeau its that he is far too oil-friendly to be an “environmentalist” — but the degree of balance one should strike between industry and climate is debatable.

    Secondly, Stephen Harper himself signed an accord with Germany’s Angela Merkel agreeing to phasing out fossil fuels in the coming future and shifting to renewable resources. Saudi officials have been the most prominent figures to accept this reality and have been at the forefront of clean technology. So why in the blue-fuck do Albertans lose their minds when Trudeau states the obvious? Have they become so infantilized that they can’t bear to hear a truth?

    Thirdly, Why does Trudeau insist on pandering to Albertans? With the regular visits and meetings; he’s overcompensating. Albertans will always hate Liberals/Trudeau because its fashionable. Evidently, there is not much Trudeau can do to change that.

    *: I say this as someone who has previously lived in Alberta and still has a ton of friends and family in the province. I’m still a western-Canadian so don’t bother with the Laurentian elite BS. I’m just tired of hearing Albertans cry about pipelines and how much the Liberals hate them and that its Notley’s fault that the price of oil collapsed. This red-hatted Joe is what you get when you coddle someone to the point that they are oblivious of basic information.

    • daveconstable says:

      Here is Upton Sinclair, albeit in a different context: ” It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

    • The Doctor says:

      The other thing about Albertans is the way they make sweeping, pejorative generalizations about the inhabitants of certain jurisdictions (e.g., claiming that they’re all stupid).

    • Charlie says:

      You clearly don’t have enough of a grasp on the English language to be using a term like bigot. I’m not particularly sure you even know what bigotry is, hence your nonchalant usage of the term.

      I was knowingly being facetious (don’t know if you know what that word is; not sure if they teach that in trucking school). As noted in my original comment, my proximity to Albertans did not preclude me from casting a broad generalization.

      Don’t post replies to my comments, Les. You’re pathetically incapable of engaging in a productive and adult discussion as proven by the plethora of redundant comments you post on this board. Go pester someone else with your with one of your endless diatribes about liberals/the left and etc.

  5. Bill Templeman says:

    The problem is Trudeau’s “eventually” as in “we must eventually get off oil”. “Eventually” is now. I wonder how many of those who raised their hands realize that human society has to take disruptive action now in order to avoid catastrophe? We can innovate and mitigate at the extraction sites all we want, but all that oil is eventually going to be refined, burned and emitted from tailpipes. It is the emissions we have to reduce/stop. We cannot have it both ways, and while we are pumping this oil, as Kelly wrote above, the Chinese and Europeans are getting far out ahead of us on renewable energy technology. We should be converting our oil companies to energy companies and giving them leverage to develop Canadian alternative energy. Instead we are playing the Ostrich Game and the guy in the “I love oil” tee shirt is going to be unemployed, again.

  6. CuJoYYC says:

    No but the vast majority in the room did, including the WRP Kenney Kiddies Klatch 10 rows in from of me.

  7. CuJoYYC says:

    Trudeau has probably answered more questions from the public in two weeks than Harper did in 10 years. These town halls with unscripted questions are the actions that support the claim of being open to Canadians. None of the questions were vetted. No one was refused admission due to their views. No one had their Facebook feed creeped in advance of allowing them to attend. Hecklers were not asked to leave.

    That is openness.

    The funny thing is the hecklers, many of whom were proudly wearing Trump “Make Amerika Great Again” caps, (the questioner was waving his all night) somehow fail to comprehend that the protectionist policies of the Donald will hurt us far more than any carbon tax, and provincial NDP or federal Liberal policies ever could. But hey, you can’t stop the stupid these days.

  8. daveconstable says:

    When the writ was dropped a year and a half ago, I saw Harper give a stolid and boring speech, the my guy made a jumbled speech and took no questions, then JT in 3rd place, with group of people, and his response to the beginning of the campaign. It was tv, but I though, ‘Whoa, this guy is good with a crowd. The long campaign is going t be good to him.”
    He is great at this stuff.
    I still don’t care for Liberals, but they have a real people guy with this fellow.

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