Canada's Leadership Deficit

Canadian leadership

Canada’s Leadership Deficit

Canada’s leaders at all levels of government are wanting.

At the municipal level, the Mayors of Toronto and Montreal have demonstrated tremendous incompetence in managing the antisemitic demonstrations in both cities. Their police chiefs and forces are equally to blame for not acting and remaining passive in the face of massive provocation.

Demonstrations against Jewish institutions continue apace. Masked demonstrators enter synagogues freely, intimidating worshippers and instilling fear in the Jewish communities of both cities. Police stand aside and let demonstrators run rampant, with no arrests and appearing to cower in fear of this Islamist bullying.

Demonstrators recently blocked Prime Minister Trudeau from entering the venue where he was hosting a formal dinner for the Prime Minister of Italy. Instead of seeing security forces clear the area to allow guests to arrive unmolested, both Prime Ministers were prevented from entering while police and security merely stood by and did nothing.

The Italian official party, honored guests, and media were made privy to the inability or unwillingness of security officials to control Islamist demonstrators and the leader of a G-7 ally was witness to the their foolishness and incompetence.

In Montreal, Islamist demonstrators have blocked McGill University and Concordia University buildings, the historic Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, and other institutions that have nothing to do with Israeli foreign policy, to simply flex their muscles and intimidate Jews and non-Jews alike.

Again, the Mayor had done nothing until a few days ago when a private lawyer asked for and obtained an injunction against demonstrators.

One assumes that both police forces have been constrained by orders from City Hall since both Mayors appear to support these activists against Jewish and Israeli interests.

Is this fear of Islamists or simple institutionalized antisemitism?

At the provincial level, both Alberta and Ontario Premiers are pursuing policies detrimental to their citizens.

Alberta’s Premier Daniele Smith is boldly leading Albertans into the 1920’s.

Rather than focus on developing green energy technologies to prepare Albertans for the future, she is putting all bets on the oil and gas sector that is in fact shrinking.

Demand for petroleum products is diminishing given the increasing popularity of hybrid and electric vehicles, public concerns about global warming, and industry’s adapting to the green energy sources that are increasingly affordable and less controversial.

Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford is caught in spirals of conflicts of interest as he panders to his financial supporters by allowing them to develop previously sacrosanct green belts around Ottawa and Toronto to build luxury housing.

And in Quebec, the nationalist government of François Legault is further creating a ghetto in Quebec by further limiting English language education, raising fees at Montreal’s two internationally renowned English language universities, and forcing the producers of all manufactured goods to put all labels in French – financially unviable for many multinational businesses like automakers and consumer goods.

The Federal level is worse.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s government veers from crisis to crisis.

Corruption, a lack of transparency, and mismanagement are the order of the day, and many if not most Canadians are fed up.

With respect to Islamism, the federal government appears more concerned with hurting the feeling of Muslim voters than in protecting society from fanatics bent on disrupting the lives of many Canadians and propagating antisemitic hatred.

This likely emanates from fear of Islamists per se or fear of losing the Muslim vote in the vote rich regions of both Toronto and Montreal. Indeed, many Canadians wonder if Canada is merely an amalgam of people from all over the world who need not respect the country’s fundamental values and fully adapt to them. rather than a country with strongly defined principles.

The same day that the U.N. revealed that Hamas had committed mass rapes and mutilations of women and girls on October 7^th and subsequently on their hostages, and days after over 450 UNRWA employees were identified as having participated in the Hamas attack directly and hundreds more accused of being members of Hamas’s military wing, Canada’s Foreign Aid Minister Ahmed Hussen announced that Canada would not only resume donations to UNRWA but actually increase  them substantially.

Since coming to office, the Trudeau government has touted a feminist foreign policy as a mainstay of Canada’s international presence. What a feminist foreign policy, providing funding to an organization whose employees actively participated in the rape and mutilation of Israeli women and girls on October 7^th of last year as well as holding many hostages until this very day and mutilating and even raping some of their corpses.

Internationally, Canada is perceived by its major allies as weak and leaderless.

Our military is woefully understaffed and under equipped. Despite being a founding member of NATO and a G7 country, Canada cannot meet its funding agreements while smaller, newer members, such as Poland and the Baltic states, do.

We have no ability to defend ourselves, and Canada’s contribution to international security is nil. Canada no longer has the staff or equipment to participate in peacekeeping operations, once the shining jewel in Canada’s foreign policy crown.

Canada is also no longer invited to participate in emerging regional security arrangements. The recently created U.S., U.K., and Australian defence agreement for the Pacific has no Canadian presence despite Canada being a Pacific nation.

While a feminist foreign policy may play well among Canada’s left, it does little to impress our allies or foes in a deeply polarized and highly dangerous world.

Leadership requires vision beyond the traditional electoral cycle.

It requires defending the country and its citizens.

It calls for governments to invite debate, to take unpopular decisions for the common good, to not hide when its decisions are wrong or questioned and to create consensus among voters and politicians.

It also calls for an opposition that admits dialogue and democratic thinking and avoids stoking the fear or alienation of voters and that proposes constructive ideas rather than solely criticism.

It calls for civility, not insults.

It calls for a foreign policy that creates strong links with our allies, in which we live up to our commitments and which allows us to defend not only our geographic borders but also the cyber universe that controls most of our day-to-day activities.

It calls for a government that protects the rights of all citizens to live in peace and demands that all respect the fundamental values that define Canada.

Finally, it calls for direct action against foreign governments  that directly or indirectly interfere with our politics.

We have none of the above in Canada today at any level of government.

Nor is the official opposition any better. Canada’s main opposition leader Pierre Poilievre is a Trump wannabee bent on dividing Canadians and pursue a campaign based on hatred and insults, attacking the media, and avoiding their questions on fundamental issues.

Poilievre cannot even debate security and intelligence issues in a highly dangerous world knowledgably because he refuses to obtain the security clearances necessary to access this information that would require delving deeply into his and his wife’s past.

This latter issue leads many to suspect that there is something in his past or present that he doesn’t want revealed – not a promising platform from which to attack the Trudeau administration for its lack of transparency.

According to noted columnist Andrew Coyne of the Globe and Mail, what is noteworthy about many of our biggest problems today is that none of our political leaders offers any real solutions to any of them, nor is there much expectation that they will. Housing, health care, productivity – if anything, these are likely to grow worse, not better, in the years to come.

Canadians deserve better.

But there don’t seem to be any leaders at any level of government waiting in the wings who can meet the above criteria and could lead Canada with the vision and boldness required to deal with the national and international challenges we all face.

Pity.