He now sits as a lame duck navigating a new Trump presidency. Pictured: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Photo Credit: Justin Trudeau/X.
Justin Trudeau is on his way out as prime minister, giving hope for a renewed Canada. Unfortunately, he is not out of office quite yet, and the country he damaged cannot easily be restored.
In his Jan. 6 press conference, Trudeau demonstrated his continued disconnect with reality, daring to say he left Canada better in better shape with a stronger middle class. It is hard to see in any measure how this is the case. The Trudeau regime set aside good government to preside over a controlled demolition of Canada’s economy, freedoms, and identity.
The resource sector, primarily oil and gas, powers this country and its economy. Regardless, Trudeau shut down the Northern Gateway pipeline and banned oil tankers on BC’s northwest coast. He created a regulatory environment where pipelines and other major projects were so impossible that companies gave up trying. Smart money left this country for jurisdictions more sincerely open for business.
Free speech was the only other realm so similarly and smothering regulated. In 2023, the Online News Act put online content providers under the same bureaucratic oversight as broadcasters, as if the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission had any business telling YouTubers what to say.
Through various funding envelopes, Trudeau gave the mainstream media an unofficial bribe to offer friendly coverage and perpetuate the centre-left perspective that aligned with Liberal values. Next, Trudeau introduced a tax on social media companies that directed people to news sources. The result was that Facebook and Instagram banned Canadian news, a devastating blow to independent media.
Last year, Trudeau introduced the Online Harms Act that would enable a judge to pre-emptively put a person under house arrest and electronic monitoring over the likelihood of saying something hateful. Dystopian pre-crime concepts were astonishingly merged with political correctness and old-fashioned totalitarianism.
Trudeau promised small deficits when he was elected in 2015, all to build the country’s infrastructure. It was the perfect time to do so, he said, given low interest rates. Thanks to rampant and misguided government handouts during the pandemic, including contracts to Liberal-friendly people who did next-to-nothing, Canada’s inflation soared. Trudeau blew all fiscal guard rails and ultimately lost two finance ministers over it, burying Canadians under a pile of debt they will never repay.
The government response to the pandemic did more harm than the disease, and Ottawa has its share of blame. Trudeau did little to circumvent travel from China in COVID’s early days, but did everything to implement vaccine mandates on the military and civil service, and on all federally-regulated travellers. Get an injection or stay home, freedoms be damned. Were you fired for refusing the shot? No employment insurance for you.
The pandemic was but a speed bump in an open immigration policy that has strained Canada’s housing and transportation infrastructure in numerous ways. For years a closed border crossing in Quebec became the favorite place for thousands to enter Canada by, putting themselves at the front of an ever-growing immigration line.
By 2023, more than eight million people living in Canada were permanent residents, a number that continues to increase by almost 500,000 annually. The only thing growing at a faster rate than immigration is the size of the federal civil service, a growth that has statistically usurped the self-employed. Big government means big bills, but who will pay them?
Young, Canadian-born citizens struggle to get jobs as federal programs subsidize temporary foreign workers so much, employers would be dumb to hire anyone else unless they absolutely needed to. Merit is downgraded whenever diversity, equity, and inclusion are emphasized, a value the Trudeau government has emphasized at every turn.
The country is more demoralized and divided than ever. Trudeau placed second to the Conservatives in the last two terms winning just 33.12 per cent and 32.62 per cent of the vote respectively. Less than 5.6 million Canadians voted for him in 2021, but, thanks to an agreement with the NDP, he expanded the nanny state through national daycare and dental care programs. The tax more, get less model that has destroyed Canadian health care expanded to new arenas.
“Screw the west, we’ll take the rest,” the electoral adage of Liberal organizer Keith Davey in 1980, was retooled to worse effect under Trudeau. The new phrase, never expressed openly, was close to “Screw Canada, we’ll take Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.” There was one exception: when Atlantic Canada was about to face a federal carbon tax on home heating bills, the Liberals exempted fuel oil.
Canadians have had enough, and now the Canada that Trudeau divided is unifying in opposition against him. Unfortunately, he will continue to preside over the Canadian collapse until a new Liberal leader and prime minister is chosen in March.
Stateside, a strident President-elect Donald Trump is taking office with an open threat of putting on a 25 per cent tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada. Who will navigate Canadian interests while Trudeau sits as a lame duck prime minister and the best of the current cabinet drops out to pursue the Liberal leadership?
