Canada

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has never met a cause he didn’t want to fund. Nor a constituency that he doesn’t want to satisfy.

And therein lies his major problem.

His approach to government has been to follow the populist playbook and throw taxpayer money at any special interest group and provide his Liberal Party friends with large consulting contracts.

His parliamentary alliance with the New Democratic Party has shifted his Liberal Party strongly to the left and this has upset many middle of the road liberals as well as moderate conservatives who might have voted Liberal in the next election given the Conservative Party’s shift to the hard right.

At time when many Canadians are facing economic hardships, his government has spent money like drunken sailors.

In 2021-2022 the Canadian government spent C$16.4 billion on consultant contracts up from $8.3 billion in 2016 while from 2016 - 2021, Canada’s public sector also grew from 342,000 to 391,000 people – a 15% increase.

Does this mean that Canada’s public sector employees are ineffective, or that someone is making a lot of money at the taxpayers’ expense?

In the meanwhile, Canada’s health care system has degenerated to the point where essential surgeries are constantly delayed or worse yet, not taking place. This is not the sole fault of the federal government. Provincial governments are responsible for implementing heath care in their jurisdictions along with the federal government, and most of them seem to have a vested interest in seeing the current system replaced by a private insurance scheme.

In most cases, in politics perception counts for more than reality.

Canadian youth will likely not be able to buy housing in the future given the tremendous increase in housing costs. This least in part because of the federal government’s allowing foreign speculators to buy housing and drive the prices up.

In addition, the federal government has decided to raise immigration quotas significantly without analysing and addressing the impact on housing and rental costs. while the significant rise in immigrants has also raised demand for

Canadian youth and their taxpaying parents are questioning such expenses, and others like the multimillion-dollar contributions to UNRWA that has been shown to act on behalf of Hamas and indeed had many members participate in the terrorist attack of October 7^th.

This at a time when pro-Hamas demonstrators are clogging the streets of Canada’s major cities, blocking access to many buildings including the federal parliament, attacking Jewish individuals, businesses, and organizations, and calling for the elimination of Israel and the death of all Jews worldwide.

Trudeau’s relative silence on this issue has irritated many Canadians, and valid perceptions are that his government is standing aside while Hamas supporters sow hatred and propose violence against Jews and their institutions. And the ambivalence of many of his cabinet ministers and caucus on rising antisemitism and the open support for Hamas among many of his New Democratic Party (NDP) allies is leaving many Canadians cold.

According to Canadian journalist Douglas Todd, Muslims account for 10.2 per cent of the population of Greater Toronto, as well as 16 to 26 per cent of voters in a dozen of that megalopolis’s ridings, which most pundits believe are crucial to the Liberals’ chances. The Muslim population also makes up the same significant proportion of voters in six ridings in Montreal, two in Calgary and one in Ottawa. Muslims are somewhat more decentralized throughout Metro Vancouver, where they comprise 4.2 per cent of all residents.

The threat against so-called progressive politicians has hit hard in British Columbia, where NDP Premier David Eby asked Selina Robinson, who is Jewish, to resign from her cabinet position because of her comment, for which she apologized, that Israel was founded on a “crappy piece of land with nothing on it.”

Robinson’s dismissal occurred after representatives from 14 B.C. mosques and Islamic groups pressured Eby to remove the post-secondary education minister. They said no NDP MLA or candidate for the next election would be welcome in their mosques until action was taken against Robinson, who has since left the NDP entirely.

Muslim groups in Canada are coalescing and playing political hardball, and the Liberals and NDP are reacting in fear of losing voted in crucial parliamentary ridings.

But is the prospect of a Conservative led government is palatable for many Canadians? Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is a Trump wannabee who hates the media, never answers their questions, and refuses to submit to a normal background security check that would allow him access to vital intelligence information necessary to understand the state of global realities.

His ongoing campaign preaches hatred and division without offering any concrete policies that would address the Liberal government’s shortcomings. Like Trump south of the border, he simply resorts to insults and complaints, and most of his party appears to have bought into this political strategy and Poilievre’s political philosophy.

Poilievre’s respect for facts is nil. The Canadian media do a poor job in fact checking his many outright lies, and don’t do much investigating of his past or his wife’s.

As well, there is the question of India’s interference in his leadership campaign, purchasing party memberships to ensure that Poilievre used to win the contest, according to a report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).  

Getting back to Prime Minister Trudeau, by catering to single issue constituencies on the left, he seems to have forgotten a prime maxim of politics that, when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

Furthermore, he seems to have forgotten that Canadians like being governed from the center. Thus, his low standing in the polls and the likelihood that he could lose the next election unless he finds a way to bring disaffected Liberals and centrists back to his party’s fold.

The next election is scheduled for 2025.

At this point in time, the center is lost, and no leader in any party appears to be able or willing to recapture it.

Thus I don’t know who will win the next election, but Canadians could end up being the ultimate losers.