Joe Oliver: Lament for a misgoverned nation
The evidence against Canada's government is overwhelming
As they prepare to celebrate their country’s 155th birthday, Canadians are suffering at the hands of a divisive, incompetent government that has undermined prosperity, freedom, parliamentary responsibility, the independence of institutions, national unity and our country’s global standing. Unless the unsavoury confidence-and-supply agreement with the NDP unravels or the Liberal caucus rebels against an increasingly autocratic yet disengaged prime minister, we may be condemned to another three years before a despondent electorate can finally say: enough!
The public’s overarching concern is rampaging inflation — at 7.7 per cent year-on- year, the highest in 40 years — which is devastating fixed-income pensioners, entry-level home buyers and lower-income Canadians, and eroding the living standards of the middle class. Yet Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland’s solution is more fiscal stimulus, more debt, more regulation and more taxes, while giving short shrift to productivity, competitiveness, private-sector investment, resource development and longer-term growth. Her April budget projected a $52.8-billion deficit for 2022-23 that falls only to $8.4 billion in 2025-26. To put that in perspective, total program spending was $473 billion last year, $140 billion above the pre-pandemic level.
Because of the government’s continuing profligacy, the inflation-fighting burden has had to be shouldered entirely by monetary policy, i.e. interest rates, which will be hiked higher and faster because the Bank of Canada, like the American Federal Reserve, at first believed inflation would be transitory. The question now is how deep the looming U.S. recession will be and how gravely Canada’s economy will suffer.
The Liberal government suspended the civil liberties of 38 million Canadians by invoking the Emergencies Act because local police would not remove trucks from Ottawa streets, which they had the power to do. It cannot conjure up a cogent justification for its assault on Charter rights and stonewalls a parliamentary committee hearing, hoping the public will lose interest. The stench of this shameful act will live on in the history books and besmirch the Trudeau legacy, along with his two citations for unethical behaviour.
Ministerial responsibility has become an empty promise — unless the minister is in the PM’s crosshairs for inconvenient integrity, as Jody Wilson-Raybould was. Falsely telling Parliament and the Canadian people that the police requested invocation of the Emergencies Act is obviously a fireable offense, but Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino will only be thrown under the bus if his mendacity becomes a political liability for the prime minister. Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly often seems out of her depth and is clearly not in control of Global Affairs or her own staff: witness the mortifying diplomatic attendance at a Russian embassy party.
Toronto Pearson Airport is experiencing mind-numbing delays that harm the beleaguered tourism industry, damage Canada’s reputation and massively inconvenience businesses and travelers. In yet another evasion of ministerial responsibility, Omar Alghabra, the hapless minister of transport, initially blamed that administrative fiasco on out-of-practice travelers. Meanwhile, anyone who urgently needs a passport is lining up the night before, even though applications are down 45 per cent from pre-pandemic demand.
It is hard to keep up with the scandals, which emerge on a weekly, sometimes even daily basis. The latest shocker was uncovered by the Halifax Examiner: RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki “made a promise” to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and the Prime Minister’s Office to use the mass murders in Nova Scotia to help pass their gun control law. Undermining the independence of law enforcement for partisan purposes is a serious abuse of power, meaning yet another minister may be for the chopping block. Yet Trudeau denied having exercised “undue influence,” which he also did (falsely it turned out) in the SNC-Lavalin case. Does our prime minister have a shred of credibility left? |
