Jean Chretien is wrong

I have nothing but respect for PM Chretien. I believe he was a great PM and I worked for his government back in the 90s. However his assertion that PM Trudeau should be consulting with the old Liberal guard is flat wrong.

The old Liberal guard had no answer for Stephen Harper. They barely beat him in 2004 and then went on to lose three elections after that, including being reduced to the third party in Parliament in 2011. Yes, for 2004 and 2006 they had to deal with the Sponsorship Scandal but it was also the old guard that got the Liberals into that mess in the first place. 

If the old guard would have still been in charge in 2015 it is highly likely that Stephen Harper would have hung on to government for at least a couple more years if not longer.

I have stated many times in this blog that Justin Trudeau does not receive enough credit for renewing and reviving the Liberal Party of Canada in the three short years he was leader of it, before the 2015 election. He did so by ruthlessly tossing the old guard into the dust bin of history, to the hatred of some of them to this day. The results speak for themselves. Yes the Harper government in 2015 was long in the tooth and Canadians wanted a change but Canadians still have to like the alternatives presented to them before they will make that change. Justin Trudeau represented that change and he did it by bringing the Liberal Party into the 21st Century and by bringing in new blood and new ideas. 

The time of the old Liberal guard is long past. So far past that some of them have become Conservatives. Remember I used to work for them and even I can see this reality. Consulting with them would be a step backwards.

The Continued Inferiority Complex of French Quebecers

Quebec has alot going for it. It is the second largest province by area and population in the country. Its levels of education is among the highest in the country. It has resources to burn and it has access to the outside world through one of the longest rivers in the world.

You would think that with all of those advantages that the people or Quebec would have a much broader view of the world and would not be so damned provincial. And yes, with the exception of a few pockets in and around Montreal Quebecers are probably the most inward looking people in the country.

I can understand this to a certain extent. When I was born Quebec was dominated by a minority English speaking elite that exploited the French majority for their own benefit. Those benefits never reached the French majority. 

That began to change soon after I was born and the majority French were successful in throwing off the yoke of the English elite and taking control of their own province and they did it with next to no violence. It really was an astounding achievement.

Which brings up the question of why French Quebecers have not shown the confidence in themselves that would come from such an achievement. There is no sign of it. If you speak to some francophone Quebecers you would think that nothing has changed in the last 60 years, that les anglais are still plotting to reverse the progress they have made.

It is a preposterous notion. It is true that Quebec is 5 million French people in a sea of almost 400 million English people. However, Americans do not care about Quebec. Many of them would not be able to find it on a map. They are not an active threat, although like the rest of Canada, Quebec does have to push back against American culture in order to maintain its distinctiveness, but this is just a function of the sheer size of the US population and the dominance of the US on the international scene. As for English Canadians, there are no evil anglos, sitting in offices in Toronto and other places in Canada, twirling their mustaches, and planning the subjugation of French Quebecers.

So why are French Quebecers still so damned afraid of losing their identity?

The reason is the English elite has been replaced by a French elite and it is in their interests to keep ordinary Quebecers in fear for their identity. Just look at the ruling class in Quebec. Politicians of ALL stripes, the media, business moguls and academics all still claim that the French identity is fragile and in constant threat of being overwhelmed. They do this of course for the same reasons other politicians use identity politics, to cover up the fact that they are exploiting ordinary French Quebecers and to cover up the fact that Quebec is probably the most mismanaged political jurisdiction in Canada, and in the top 10 mismanaged jurisdictions in North America.

Simply put Quebecers threw off one parasitic elite only to be saddled with another one. The result is Quebec is a perennial poor province in relation to its population, education levels and natural gifts. Government services are below the national average in quality, again despite its many advantages. 

Some Quebecers are noticing, which is why there has been a rise in the use if identity politics in the province in recent years. However, the Quebec elite have a problem of not being able to kick around the English any more, which is why they have begun to target immigrants, particularly those of other cultures and religions.

It really is too bad. Quebec could be a power house in this country but it is being held back by an elite that sees political and economic value in perpetuating that process and a population that is unable or unwilling to look outside of their little bubble. As long as that remains the reality Quebec and it people will never reach their full potential.

A Shot Across the Bow?

Yesterday a bunch of prominent Conservatives all posted the same anti-carbon tax tweet. Many commentators believed that this was directed at the Liberals but in fact I believe it was directed at Erin O'Toole.

The simple fact is he lost an election to the HATED Justin Trudeau, even losing a couple of seats in the process. There is internal tension within the party as a result as they try to figure out why they lost. The reason is simple and obvious and you would know what it is by reading some of my previous posts. This figuring out what went wrong is causing various factions within the party to jockey for position so that they can influence policy and election planning for the next go round in 18 to 24 months.

It would seem one of those factions still believes that eliminating the carbon tax is the way to go and they are letting Erin O'Toole know this because he has accepted the need for one, a watered down carbon tax but a price on carbon nonetheless.

The Conservative loss is going to test Mr. O'Toole's leadership. Before the election he was an untested leader and the party was not going to replace him. Now he has been tested and found wanting. He will be struggling to hang onto his job and for that he is going to have to find allies within the Party. Many of the factions in the party will be putting forward their conditions for providing their support and it would appear that one of those factions did just that, in a very public way, yesterday.

It is still an open question of whether Mr. O'Toole will stay on as leader or be pushed out. If he succeeds in keeping his job then it will be because he managed to "buy off" enough of the different factions within the party. Of course we will not know which ones he managed to buy, the internal logic of the deals and how they will impact party policy until the next election. However, if history is a guide, Mr. O'Toole will probably still have the same issues he had during the last election. Different factions, with positions in opposition with each other, expecting him and the party to satisfy their demands. 

The Liberals will have a much tougher time next time

I largely walked away from the election about half way through. When Justin Trudeau ended the third week by taking a day off, despite the pundits and the pollsters saying he was losing, I knew that the election was pretty much in the bag. What happened after that would not and did not change that outcome. 

The aftermath has been predictable as well. Both Mr. Singh and Mr. O'Toole are on the hot seat and it is an open question of whether either will still be the leaders of their respective parties in the new year. My guess is that Mr. Singh will survive. The NDP does not have a history of eating its leaders and they have been accepting mediocrity since before I was born so he will probably be OK. Mr. O'Toole has a 50/50 chance. The revelation about him double-dipping on his housing allowance is just the thing that can be used to turf him. Keep an eye on that. His only saving grace is there is no obvious choice to replace him. Mr. Ford and Mr. Kenney have both shit the bed in their respective provinces, none of the current CPC front bench are worth a damn and there is no outsider who has the stature to be able to convince Canadians to vote for them as PM just months after winning the leadership.

The Liberals won again but it is only going to become tougher from here on out. The simple fact is the next time we go to the polls Justin Trudeau and the Liberals will have been in power for around eight years and they will be going for their fourth straight mandate. As I have stated here many times governments have life spans. Usually around the eight year mark the desire for change becomes very high and voters begin to look seriously at the alternatives. If they can live with that alternative they make the change. The Liberals will be in that situation the next time we go to the polls. While it is not guaranteed that Canadians will want to make a change it could be a strong possibility. 

The problem for the Party that would replace the Liberals is they are going through a serious identity crisis. Are they the hard-right populist party that the West wants them to be or the more moderate conservative party that central Canada wants them to be? How do they satisfy their social conservative supporters without alienating moderate voters who do not want to even talk about their issues? They are going to have to figure that out. However, do not believe for a second that their problems automatically eliminate them from contention. Mr. O'Toole tried to paper over these conflicts but he did a lousy job of it and Canadians were not ready for change anyway. The next time the situation will be different and either Mr. O'Toole or his replacement could be more convincing at hiding the Conservatives' inner conflicts. Mr. Ford became Premier of Ontario because there was a strong desire for change and he managed to appear non-threatening. That was the strategy that Erin O'Toole attempted this time without success but there is no guarantee it will not work the next time, assuming they try to repeat that strategy again.

This is not to say that the Liberals will lose the next election. However, I would point out that the outcome of this election was never in doubt regardless of what the pollster and pundits were saying. The only question at the beginning of this election campaign was whether the Liberals would win another minority or win their much sought after majority. That question never changed. The next time the question will be can the Liberals win a fourth straight mandate? I do not have an answer but I do know that it is possible that the answer could be no.

I am Constantly Reminded of Why I Really Do Not Like Politics

Believe it or not I really do not like politics. For me it is like a drug, an addiction that I have tried to kick in the past without success. I guess if you are going to be addicted to something politics is better than drugs or alcohol but it still sucks sometimes.

The latest reminder is the PM going on holidays on Truth and Reconciliation Day and the media making a big deal of it. It is patently stupid on their part on so many levels but it further indicates how far modern politics has fallen. There was a time when politics meant something, big issues were debated and decided upon, and the bullshit that we have been seeing for the past few days never saw the light of day. Now politics is all about the bullshit and the important issues are ignored.

This is not just a thing with the current PM. We see it everywhere and no political figure is spared the BS. Andrew Scheer was a terrible candidate for PM and the policy ideas that his Conservatives produced for the 2019 election were retrograde in the extreme. However, what did we talk about ad nauseum during that election? The fact he did not actually pass a real estate licencing exam and the fact he was an American citizen. Both were interesting things to know about him and I would say they were relatively important as well but not dominate-two-weeks-of-the-damned-election-campaign important. They should have been one or two day stories, tops and then we should have been talking about policy again.

This past Federal election was not as bad as previous ones. At least when Mr. O'Toole tripped up it was because he could not settle on a final policy decision around gun control. That deserved all of the attention it received because it was a policy issue, which is what election campaigns should be about. Still, that discussion of policy never ventured past the superficial and there was still way more attention being paid to process than policy for the election campaign to be useful.

I am old enough to have seen when politics was different and that is when I became hooked on it. At that time politics was actually kind of fun. I could have thoughtful, in depth debates with people who disagreed with me without them calling me names or questioning my intelligence, the legitimacy of my birth or suggesting I was a man lacking certain man parts. Hell, I could have these debates and then have a beer with my debating partner afterwards, where we would piss each other off talking about hockey. Those days are gone and we are left with the cesspool that we all now swim in.

Of course, our society is the worst for it and I believe that eventually this debasement of politics will have some real world impacts that will surprise alot of people when it finally happens and/or put all of us in a pile of shit from which we will not be able to escape. (Runaway climate change, I am looking in your direction.)

The blame for this can be put squarely on the shoulders of those who would govern us and those that attach themselves to them. As has happened many times before throughout history the ruling class (politicians, journalists, the influential wealthy, the bureaucracy) have lost touch with those that they would rule with the predictable results. They are all so engaged in one big, incestuous circle jerk that they cannot see what is actually happening in the world around them. They have absolutely failed in their duty to those that they claim they have the right to govern. History has shown that such a situation cannot last indefinitely. In the extreme cases that ruling class is completely swept away, sometimes losing everything including their heads. 

This time will not be any different. I have written in this space many times about the triple challenges of automation, climate change and the rise of China and how they are going to change the world we live in now. If politics were being done right our rulers would be tackling these issues with more gusto, energy and thought than they are now. But politics is not being done right so when the impacts of these changes really begin to be felt by ordinary people they are going to find that their rulers are completely unequipped to help them deal with them and those ordinary people might be convinced that they need to replace the ruling class. (Note this does not mean a change in government but a change in how we are governed.)

I may live long enough to see a revolution in the West. I believe there is a very good chance one will happen, or at least begin, in my lifetime. Maybe when that happens politics will become fun again.