What’s up with Canada?

Ukraine

  • The first day back at work is rarely easy. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s return to the office was especially hard: He returned to a country that wants to fire his Liberal party – and a Conservative party that’s fired up to take their jobs. Here’s how it went (more or less):

    Pierre On behalf of the two million Canadians using food banks and the students living in homeless shelters: Welcome back from your free $89,000 vacation, Justin! I just have one question: Are you finally ready to undo everything you did to cause Canada’s affordability crisis?

    Justin Slogans don’t build houses, Pierre. You have nothing to offer but personal attacks because you have no ideas. All you’ve done is vote against every measure we’ve taken to fix the affordability crisis.

    Pierre You told Canadians you paid for your vacation. So tell me: Did you pay the carbon tax on the 200,000 tonnes of carbon your private jets spewed into the atmosphere? While you were living it up on a private beach in Jamaica, the Canadian public nearly froze and starved to death!

    Justin Food-price inflation is caused by climate change. Farmers know this as well as anybody. But you have no plan to fight climate change. Plus we struck deals with 30 municipalities to build half a million new homes in the next decade. And you have no plan for housing, either.

    Conservative 350,000 Canadians are unhoused – and millions more can’t afford to move out of their parents’ basements or are worried about losing their homes. Yet home construction fell by 7% in 2023. Housing Minister Sean only cares about photo ops. But Canadians can’t live inside photo ops.

    Sean Photo ops? We’ve struck binding agreements that require municipalities to modernize how homes are built – faster and denser – and where homes are built – closer to transit. And let’s not forget: When Pierre was housing minister, he built fewer homes than we did last year.

    Jagmeet Justin, you just don’t get it: There’s a housing crisis in Canada! Renovictions are at an all-time high. Why do you always wait until there’s a crisis before you decide to do something about it?

    Justin We eliminated sales tax on home construction. And we invested an extra $15 billion in loans to build new apartments. Plus we created a tax-free saving account to help Canadians save up for their first home.

    NDP Canadians are worried about climate change even while struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, oil and gas CEOs are giving themselves obscene bonuses while polluting the planet. When will Environment Minister Steven finally do something about this?

    Steven I agree with you. That’s why we have the world’s most ambitious plan for fighting climate change. We’re the only country in the G20 to eliminate subsidies for oil and gas companies… and we’re planning to put an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector as well.

    Conservative Last year you spent more money paying interest on all the debt racked up in the last eight years than you spent on health care. Will Finance Minister Chrystia finally cut the spending and balance the budget?

    Chrystia Let’s get the facts straight: Canada’s finances are sustainable. That’s why we have a triple-A credit rating. You don’t know how to build – only cut. So what would you cut?

    Conservative We’d cut spending on external consultants, the Asian Infrastructure Bank, the ArriveCan app… and, of course, we’d axe the carbon tax.

    Chrystia You’d cut support for Ukraine. Why do you support Vladimir Putin? Have you no shame?

    Conservative Why don’t you care that mothers are being forced to water down their milk?

    Chrystia Conservatives don’t care about working families. We’ve brought the cost of daycare down to $10 a day in seven provinces. And we cut the poverty rate in half, lifting millions of families into the middle class. And guess what? You voted against those programs!

    Conservative Oh please. You live in downtown Toronto. You have no idea what reality is really like for all the real Canadians. Why won’t you axe the tax?

    Chrystia It’s certainly true that most Canadians don’t live like Pierre does: in a house with a chef and butlers – all paid for by Canadian tax dollars. But that doesn’t change the fact that eight in ten Canadians get more back from the rebate than they pay in the carbon tax.

    Yves Quebec took in 44% of all asylum seekers last year – but we’re only 24% of the population. When will the federal government start working with the provinces to redistribute these people… and pay Quebecers back for shouldering Canada’s growing refugee crisis?

    Justin Actually, we are working with provinces to address the rise in asylum seekers, temporary foreign workers and international students. But Canada needs more immigrants to build our homes and work in our health care system.

    Bloc The number of asylum seekers from Mexico has exploded since you cancelled visa requirements for visiting Mexicans. What will Immigration Minister Marc do to stop people from coming here and making bogus refugee claims faster than we’re able to process them?

    Marc We’re dealing with historic levels of asylum seekers, yes – not just from Mexico. We aren’t ready to share our plan to address this problem publicly yet… but, trust us, we’re working on it.

    Convincing Canadians that they can trust the government to fix Canada’s problems when more and more people believe that everything is broken? Now that’s a hard job.

    Justin Trudeau returns to work

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  • New Year’s prediction: Pierre Poilievre’s crusade against the carbon tax won’t work out very well for the Conservatives in 2024.

    Why? Because, as The Canadian Press reports: “The Parliamentary Budget Office says when the carbon price hits $170 per tonne in 2030, the average Canadian household will get $388 more from the rebate than they pay for carbon pricing. Lower-income households that pay less in fuel will benefit even more.”

    I doubt Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party’s ride-or-die haters will concede to reality. But as Canada’s yet-to-be-called next federal election draws nearer, and more and more Canadians tune back into federal politics, Poilievre’s position is going to make him look ridiculous.

    Once the facts are well known, the only Canadians who will actually want Poilievre to “axe the tax” are people with an ideological axe to grind – either because they think climate change is a hoax, or because they believe Canada has no obligation to do anything about it, since we only produce 1.5% of global emissions (never mind that we only account for 0.5% of the population, right?).

    There will always be people who choose to bury their heads in the oil sands, so to speak. But according to a Ledger poll conducted after last summer’s wildfires, 72% of Canadians are worried or very worried about climate change compared to 21% who aren’t very worried and only 7% who aren’t worried at all.

    The corporate carbon tax is another matter entirely. But Poilievre’s opposition to it is similarly silly. That’s because most economists and business lobbyists agree that a carbon tax is the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Plus, if Canada didn’t have corporate carbon pricing, then Canadian exporters would be forced to pay fines to trading partners that do.

    That’s why Canada’s new trade deal with Ukraine includes a pledge to promote carbon pricing – because Ukraine is required to have such policies in place to join the European Union, and because joining the European Union is central to Ukraine’s plan to prevent another Russian invasion.

    But the Conservatives voted against that agreement – despite the fact that Ukraine already has carbon pricing and had already signed it. And that was when the tide began to turn against Poilievre: Columnists and commentators who had been all-but cheering Trudeau’s plummet in the polls suddenly began to wonder and worry about the guy running to replace him.

    Mind you, it didn’t help matters that around the same time Poilievre referenced a false Fox News report of a terrorist attack at the Canadian border during Question Period – and then lied and lashed out at a reporter for questioning his conduct the following day.

    That petulant performance by the would-be prime minister stood in stark contrast to his infamous kicking-ass-while-eating-an-apple exchange, when another reporter accused Poilievre of “taking a page out of the Donald Trump book” but then failed to provide any evidence to support the claim.

    However, now the MAGA Republican comparison seems like less of a stretch. That’s because far-right American politicians have all but forsaken Ukraine – because they don’t think the United States has any responsibility to save a democracy from being destroyed by an authoritarian state, or because they admire Vladimir Putin’s brutality and wish he would cradle them to sleep in his manly embrace.

    For what it’s worth, I don’t think Poilievre admires Putin or would turn his back on Ukraine. Quite the opposite: I think Poilievre despises Putin and would stand firmly with Ukraine. I think that a better explanation for his bewildering behaviour is simply that he was so blinded by his hatred of carbon taxes that he honestly believed he was somehow doing Ukraine a favour.

    It will be interesting to see how this debate plays out in 2024. While we’re likely to see and hear a lot from Poilievre in the coming days on social media and through his handful of hand-picked right-wing media outlets, he still has four more weeks of winter vacation left (wouldn’t that be nice?).

    But when the House of Commons resumes in February, will Poilievre pivot? Or will he continue to blow most of his precious speaking time in Question Period railing against the carbon tax – especially as it relates to a single mushroom farm located in his Ottawa-area riding?

    In the final weeks of the fall session, Poilievre repeatedly insisted that it’s obscene for that farm to be charged more than $100,000 in carbon tax  – evidently without caring that anybody willing to do some back-of-the-envelope math would quickly conclude that the farm is in fact a significant commercial operation… not some struggling mom-and-pop mushroom shop.

    I don’t think that standing up for the big guy will end up playing particularly well with the “everyday Canadians” Poilievre is always talking about. If Poilievre does stick to his promise to roll back the carbon tax, he’s likely going to find himself on the defensive in 2024.

    So, as we leave the season of giving behind us and begin a new year, I’d like to offer Poilievre some totally unsolicited advice: Give up your pointless war on carbon pricing, and instead get serious about providing workable solutions for Canada’s housing crisis. Canadians would be grateful — and it might just give you a fighting chance in the next election.

    Why Poilievre should love the carbon tax

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  • Don’t quote me on this but: It looks like the Canadian media is finally turning against Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

    If you haven’t been following Canadian politics, you might be thinking: What? I thought the media had a liberal bias!

    That’s certainly what people say. But that hasn’t been the case for Justin Trudeau – at least not recently. The consensus among commentators at the CBC and CTV has been that the Liberals need to go – and this was true before Poilievre passed Trudeau in popularity polls earlier this year.

    But that appears to be changing this week. Suddenly people like The Globe and Mail’s Robert Fife are on CPAC’s PrimeTime Politics acting all shocked and concerned that Poilievre would “blatantly lie” – as if that hasn’t been the guy’s modus operandi for the past eighteen years.

    The blatant lie that has Canadian pundits in arms is Poilievre’s absurd claim that Trudeau’s trade deal with Ukraine would “impose a carbon tax on the people of Ukraine while they have a knife to their throat.”

    What the deal would actually do is completely non-bindingly “promote carbon pricing” – which Ukraine already has, and which Ukraine is already doing as part of its bid to join the European Union.

    So why would Poilievre make up such a ridiculous lie? The consensus seems to be that he was trying to take a page from the Trump playbook by courting anti-democratic voters who don’t support Ukraine (because they’re cheap, lack morals, and have a crush on Vladimir Putin).

    But that doesn’t make very much sense… because MAGA politics don’t play very well in Canada. Yes, the far-right People’s Party of Canada would love to beg to differ – but they have no power, and their leader, Maxime Bernier, is basically a full-time social media troll at this point.

    Plus Poilievre, for all his lack of character, has always been vocal and steadfast in his support for Ukraine. Trudeau admitted as much when he suggested that “right-wing American, MAGA-influenced thinking has made Canadian Conservatives – who used to be among the strongest defenders of Ukraine, I’ll admit – turn their backs on Ukraine.”

    But that’s the thing: While Poilievre is certainly the Conservative leader, he isn’t really all that conservative. Nor is he a MAGA Republican for that matter, or the Donald Trump of the North, or anything like that.

    If he’s anything at all, Poilievre is an anti-tax utopian: He believes – with what appears to be religious conviction – that there isn’t a problem in the world that couldn’t be solved by cutting some taxes.

    Poilievre opposes taxes in principle too: He resents that governments force people to give to the greater good – especially because the greater good includes things he doesn’t give a fuck about, like the environment.

    Yes, it’s ironic that a politician hates taxes. But that’s the other thing about Poilievre: he lacks self awareness. That’s why he’s able to claim that “the pathological obsession these Liberals have with carbon taxes has reached a level where it is sick” without recognizing that his own obsession with carbon taxes is pathological and, well, sick.

    But that’s Poilievre. And he’s made no secret of it: He’s been Canada’s ever-contemptuous and relentlessly raging id on Parliament Hill for nearly two decades.

    It’s not his fault that Canadians are only finally catching onto him now.

    People notice Pierre Poilievre is a liar

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