gregfelton.com
Nov. 12, 2019

Well, that was a waste of time, wasn’t it!

In the end, enough Canadians voted to give Justin Trudeu’s Liberals another chance, which means four more years of having to endure a federal government led by a spineless, identity-politics mouthpiece who lacks the balls or the brains to defend the national interest against minority, corporate or Israeli interests.

On the one hand, I’m glad that my prediction of a Liberal minority government came true even though the Liberals won far more seats than I thought they would or even deserved. On the other, the result was a foregone conclusion since there was no other plausible outcome. The result represented an empty exercise of fear over principle; fear of a gang of neo-Harperite thugs re-occupying Parliament Hill overran any rational assessment of the last four years of Liberal misrule.

We know that Liberal support was unenthusiastic because the “Conservatives” won the popular vote and increased thier standing in the House, albeit not by nearly enough to form a government. Second place is still a loss. What does the final tally say about the political health of a federalist country like Canada when a separatist party, the Bloc Québécois, was the big winner (increasing from 10 seats to 32) and the Liberals and the NDP both lost seats (184-157 and 39-24, respectively) but ended up on the winning side?!

Perhaps it’s the nostagia talking, or maybe it’s political ennui, but I can remember when elections were genuine contests when people voted positively for their chosen candidate. In the mid-1970s, I joined the Progressive Conservative Party because I was fed up with Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s multiculturalism bullshit, his endless pandering to Quebec and his obsessive Constitutional navel-gazing. (Unfortunately, my objective was unattainable because the multiculturalism virus had debilitated every party at the time; it also does not mean what people think it does.)

In the 1970s and ’80s, B.C. was, and still is, a wealthy province treated with conspicuous disregard by the grand poobahs in the Golden Triangle of Toronto––Ottawa––Montreal. Western resentment towards Ottawa was principled and broad-based, and some in B.C. even talked wistfully of separation. B.C. MPs had comparatively little say in govenment since federal elections were decided before B.C.’s votes were counted, so governments had little incentive to care about B.C.’s interests. Now, “Western separatism” is inseparable from Alberta’s peevish, tantrum over Ottawa’s lack of militant enthusiasm for pumping even more toxic sludge from the ecological obscenity known as the Tar Sands.

I got involved in politics for philosophical and ideological reasons: I wanted to fight the dominance of Central Canada. Now, I have to look to Central Canada to be the voice of reason against unenlightened economic Western parochialism headquartered in the intellectual wasteland of Jason Kenney’s Alberta.

Without electoral reform and a reassertion of politics over corporatism, elections will continue to be a Hobson’s choice between propping up a sclerotic Liberal regime or risk a return to neo-fascism. The 2023 election will still be domnated by strategic (negative) voting; the only unknown is who will lead the parties.

Already Elizabeth May has stepped down after 13 years as leader of the Green Party. She should be congratulated for doing so much to raise the profile of the party, but she compromised its moral authority by opposing the BDS movement, a necessary and thoroughly lergitimate measure to draw attention to Israel’s brutal and illegitimate domination of Palestine. By rights, the next leader should be B.C. Green MP Paul Manly, who has no such moral blinders.

Andrew Scheer is facing hostility for his poor showing but managed to duck an emergency leadership convention ahead of the scheduled one in April 2020, which he is unlikely to win anyway after his utterly inept performace in the debates. Lurking in the shadows is former MP Peter McKay, which should ratchet up the fear factor. Those of you of a certain age or who have a good grasp of Canadian history know that McKay was the last leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. In 2003 he sold his party out in a take-over by Stephen Harper’s Canadian Alliance Party, now the current Conservative Party. We all know how that turned out. McKay comes by his subversion honestly: his father, PC MP Elmer McKay, led the intraparty attack on leader and later Prime Minister Joe Clark.

Jagmeet Singh, who leads the New Democratic Party, did much better personally than most expected, but his party was all but blown out in Quebec. The fluke of 2011, when the party won 59 of 75 Quebec seats and 103 seats nationwide, is like a fuzzy dream. Singh may not be a bad leader, but he has to go. He is predictable and uninspiring and therefore unlikely to lead the NDP back to political relevance. The party needs a dynamic, charasmatic left-of-centre leader like Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, but no such champion is anywhere to be seen. The party will continue to be seen as “Liberal lite” because it shares the same fetish for identity-politics and pandering to the amorphous political centre. To all intents and purposes NDP stands for No Discernable Prospects, and in a climate of fear and strategic voting that adds up to political oblivion.

Even though the Liberals survived, Trudeau cannot claim victory. His party won despite him, not because of him. Scheer was his re-election insurance, but Trudeau may not have that if a better leader is chosen. Despite the fact that Trudeau is prime minister, the Liberals need a leadership convention as soon as possible. Trudeau brings nothing of value to the party and is a threat to the government’s long-term viability. A man who selects a cabinet based on equality of reproductive plumbing instead of merit has no right to lead any government. A new leader would be less of an identity-politics embarrassment and might even have a foreign policy based on Canadian and international law instead of on aiding and abetting Isramerican subversion in places like Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, Ukraine, Palestine and Yemen.

Canadians deserve a government thay can be proud of, not one they have to be ashamed of, but after Trudeau’s betrayal, that day seems a long way off.