What is wrong with Justin Trudeau?
He’s living proof that you can win an election and yet be completely incompetent at governing a country.
Early warning sings included swearing in the House of Commons, praising Communist China’s ‘basic dictatorship’, musing about breaking up our country if Canada became too conservative, and deliberately falling downstairs in the middle of an interview. Sadly, Trudeau’s partisans ignored these signs of foolishness and poor judgement.
After forming government, the almost daily torrent of fatuity from the Trudeau government came as no surprise. Day after day we’ve had to endure silly jogging videos, costumes, colourful socks, constant woke posturing, annoying gaffes, and hectoring foreign politicians. And then came the embarrassing disaster of the 2018 India trip, with all the ridiculous Bollywood outfits, histrionic dancing, and contrived poses.
But the heart of Trudeau’s Liberal Party isn’t actually silliness. The silliness is really just a cover for a deep and abiding cynicism. Just as Trudeau believes that Canada is a post-national state with ‘no mainstream’ and ‘no core identity’, the Liberal Party is an amoral cult of personality that values nothing but power.
The Trudeau Liberals turned a blind eye to China’s interference in our elections because it helped some of their candidates win. The SNC-Lavalin scandal was an attempt to exonerate a corporation from corruption charges in order to protect Liberal electoral fortunes in Quebec.
Trudeau and his MPs equivocate about the savage attacks on Israel and Israel’s obligation to defend itself in order to pander to pro-Hamas voters. They appear to ignore real or apparent support for Hamas’s campaign of rape and murder, and can barely bring themselves to condemn it. In contrast, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Trudeau made no effort to relax tensions between his government and the protesting truckers. Instead, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, froze bank accounts, and denounced critics as a ‘fringe minority’ with ‘unacceptable views’ because he knew it would play well with his most rabid urban partisans who were largely unharmed by lockdowns and Covid restrictions.
The Trudeau government has also turned a blind eye to the housing crisis, and done nothing to improve it. In fact, they have made it much worse, by increasing immigration to record levels. We have effectively been adding the equivalent of a major Canadian city every year without the necessary infrastructure or amenities. This keeps Trudeau’s base of older, urban voters rich and secure, while stable, affordable housing remains out of reach for almost everyone else. Worse, the massive influx of a new population looks like a brazen attempt to import new Liberal voters.
But the greatest example of Trudeau’s cynicism is Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), which his government has introduced. As the Baby Boomers retire, birth rates fall, and the population ages, the cost of healthcare will balloon. Instead of doing something about this, the Liberals have simply made it legal for people to kill themselves with the help of a doctor. MAID is now the 5th leading cause of death in Canada. It is now pushed on vulnerable, elderly veterans, the homeless, and the mentally ill, and the government is now considering opening it up to drug users. Such deaths have increased 30% annually, and this figure will keep rising. This is an appalling indictment of Trudeau’s failure to address problems of quality of life in Canada, and it looks like little more than a cynical attempt to save on healthcare costs.
Unsurprisingly, Liberal polling has collapsed and has been on a downward trajectory for several months. But the next election is scheduled for October of 2025, and a lot of damage can be done before then. Serious problems call for serious people, but unfortunately we’re stuck with Trudeau right now.
Will he resign and hand the reins to someone else?
Most Canadians say he should do exactly that. The problem with that plan is that the Liberal party is basically a Mao-like cult of personality. Trudeau has so successfully made himself the face of the Liberal Party that hardly anyone even knows who the other Liberal MPs are. Chrystia Freeland, the current Minister of Finance, seems to top the short list of possible replacements for Trudeau. But she is so bound up with the Trudeau agenda, that distancing herself from it would be basically impossible. The likeliest outcome is that Trudeau stays, and drags himself and his party down to total destruction in the next election.
But next time, let’s not be fooled. The skills required to govern a country are different from what it takes to run a cult of personality. Next time, let’s ditch the cynicism, and choose seriousness and competence over flamboyant ineptitude.