Does Canada Have a Future?

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It has finally happened. Canada’s disreputable, incompetent, and palpably immature prime minister has finally decided to step down. The dancing queen of the political scene will not be missed. The problem is that he has decided to hang around like a dirty shirt by proroguing Parliament (previously due to resume on January 27) until March 24. This means all Parliamentary business is suspended and no legislative work can be undertaken while the Liberal Party presumably reflects on its platform and vets a new leader among a slew of contenders. The country is basically adrift. In the interim, Trudeau escapes question period, opposition scrutiny, non-confidence votes, or any degree of accountability. But he nominally remains prime minister for the next three months.

Glib as ever — Greg Gutfeld dubs him the hood ornament of the woke community — he informs the nation that “Since 2015 I’ve fought for this country, for you, to strengthen and grow the middle class. … We rallied to support each other through the pandemic, to advance reconciliation, to defend free trade on this continent…” yada yada yada. The lie is so barefaced as to be insulting, even to generally placid and long-suffering Canadians.

The fact is that over the years of Trudeau’s faux stewardship, Canadians have watched their economic power decline dramatically owing to soaring taxes, including an onerous and unnecessary carbon levy, prohibitive food and energy costs, careening per-capita GDP, through-the-roof inflation, and an out-of-reach housing market for young Canadians thanks to a tsunami of legal (and illegal) immigrants creating a critical housing crisis as home prices and rents reached unprecedented levels. 

This should not be a surprise. Trudeau had an agenda, transforming Canada into what he called the first post-national country, that is, into a Liberal Party socialist fiefdom. Or in his own words, he intends to remain “part of a progressive movement that will seek out a better future and [sic] for Canadians,” ensuring that the next leader will carry “the progressive Liberal standard” into the future. The truth should be obvious. Should the Liberals be re-elected, it would be game over for Canada as it lurches into becoming Venezuela North. Trudeau never knew how to run a country except to run it into the ground. In the conviction of many, he is the worst prime minister the country has ever suffered since Confederation in 1867 — with the possible exception of his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Indeed, the Trudeaus represent one of the most destructive political dynasties in modern history. 

Meanwhile, the travesty continues. There are several contenders for the soiled throne; the two most prominent and likely to succeed are Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney. I have already written about Freeland on several occasions, most recently in an article for this site. As I wrote, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Freeland, who resigned recently after a spat with Trudeau, is serially capable of doing even more damage to the country than her boss, surrendering the nation outright to the globalist machinations of the World Economic Forum on whose board she sits, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations’ Agenda 30 for Sustainable Development. She is well known for freezing the bank accounts of the 2022 Freedom Convoy truckers who protested Trudeau’s vaccine mandates, and of Canadians who donated to the cause. She would be a catastrophic leadership choice.

Then there is Carney, an advisor to Justin Trudeau, a former governor of the Bank of Canada, and, like Freeland, a board member of the World Economic Forum. Carney is pro-climate change, pro-UN Sustainability programs, and pro-the “Great Reset” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Western Standard reports, “Critics argue the reset promotes an agenda that may lead to increased government control over economic and social systems, potentially at the expense of individual liberty” — which it manifestly does. 

Interestingly, in his role as chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, Carney was involved in creating a $50 billion investment vehicle “with a significant portion coming from Canadian taxpayers, [which] led to accusations of Carney using his political advisory role for corporate gain.” The entire affair smells of yet another Liberal conflict of interest. “Carney is the incarnation of elite presumption,” wrote John Robson in The Dorchester Review. Carney would probably be an even worse choice than Freeland. 

Between these two contenders falls the Shadow. The rest of the pack consists of cronies and non-entities.

For Brian Peckford, former premier of Newfoundland and Labrador and last living signatory to the 1982 Canadian Constitution, the deeper problem that plagues the nation is not any one person or any one party. The problem is systemic. “Parliament is broken,” he writes (personal communication). When a scandal-prone Prime Minister “can break the law five times and still serve as Prime Minister, we know we have a serious problem.” 

Moreover, he argues, justly, that the Executive is too powerful and needs to be substantially reduced. The Prime Minister’s Office is bloated with parasites posing as consultants and advisers. As for the Judiciary whose members are appointed by the prime minister, it has grown corrupt and deeply politicized, having replaced natural law by secular law while vacating the Preamble to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which reads: Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law. 

Peckford continues: “It has made new law, not just interpreted existing law. Parliament needs to reassert its authority concerning the Judiciary, be involved in the appointment of judges, and insist on God being considered in all interpretations involving the Charter.” In effect, for Peckford, what Canada requires is not merely a new government, but a new Magna Carta. “Integrity must be reestablished.” But “it is likely,” he concludes, “we will continue in our mediocrity and undemocratic ways.” Neither a flattering nor a promising portrait.

While I respect Brian Peckford, who is a good friend, I do not believe that sweeping change in which honor and rectitude will prevail is even remotely possible in a fallen world. “Perfection” continues to recede asymptotically, though there are occasions in history when mediocrity may be tempered by the emergence of approximate merit and when the democratic muse is not entirely silenced. In my estimation, regarding our situation in this country, we may be lucky enough to find ourselves after the next election with that which certain purists regard as the lesser of two evils, aka the Conservatives, holding the reins of power. Romans 12:21 enjoins us, “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” I do not believe that evil will ever be overcome in this life, but I do believe that we should not allow the idea of the best to defeat the possibility of the better. The better may not be very good, but it is to be preferred over the indisputably bad. 

Should Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre be elected as Canada’s next prime minister, things will improve though perhaps not as thoroughly as we would like. To begin with, he will have to dig the nation out of the fiscal crater his predecessor left behind by operating an austerity government. Canadians are a fickle bunch and would probably vote him out of office next time round — as they did Canada’s astute prime minister Stephen Harper in 2015. Additionally, as others have pointed out, Poilievre does not appear to be willing to go scorched earth on all of Trudeau’s nation-destroying policies. 

Will he really abolish the hated carbon tax or only minimize its ruinous effect? He has not moved to expose the fraud behind carbon hysteria, gender dysphoria, or certain punitive censorship bills. He has said little about reducing immigration. In his favor is the fact that he abhors the emergence of violent antisemitism on the streets and campuses of the nation and, like Harper, is a friend to Israel. In the last analysis, the most important challenge confronting us is really quite simple: Trudeau, Freeland, Carney, the lamentable Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and self-declared socialist Stephen Guilbeault, and, for that matter, the entire Liberal Party must be stomped into the earth they claim they want to save.

What Canada now needs, so far as possible, is what Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics called phronesis, “practical wisdom” or “wisdom in determining ends and the means of attaining them” with the intention of producing a good result. In the current political environment, for better or worse Pierre Poilievre represents the spirit of phronesis, or prudence, and should be given the chance to prove himself and, equally, to prove his doubters and detractors wrong. For now, he’s all we’ve got.