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No diversity of opinion for Trudeau - National Post - 30 Nov 2023 - Rex Murphy
Rex Murphy can remember when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Canada is a nation that “respects and supports people even when we disagree with them across various points of view.”“We are going to proceed regardless of what the federal government decides to do, because this is our area of jurisdiction.” — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith
Even minimal self-consciousness and the most fitful memory would have prevented Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in his most dramatic vocal mode, from making this statement recently:
“People are forgetting a little bit that we’re a country that protects the freedom of expression, that protects liberty of conscience, that respects and supports people even when we disagree with them across various points of view.”
Were he referring to the country as it was before his stewardship, this large claim would be both worthy and correct. However, it is, or it should be a very difficult statement to make after, for example, the hostile and divisive actions of him and his government during the truckers’ protest.
Blasting the ordinary workers who made up the protests as extremists, misogynists and racists, and capping off that strident love-letter with the (purely rhetorical) question — Do we tolerate these people? — hardly squares with the claim to “support people even when we disagree with them.”
He publicly slammed the truck drivers’ legitimate protest and refused to even meet or speak with his citizens which, even with the most generous interpretation, will never square with “respecting and supporting” those with different views.
This was unique. Name any other protest we have seen in this country where Mr. Trudeau responded in public with rebuke and scorn. There is none. The “right” causes always have his support and praise, and even in non-protest times, federal money for their organizations. There is deep inequity here.
That inequity is epitomized by the jailing and legal pursuit of Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich (strange that a misogynistic protest was led by a woman). Stranger still that our male-feminist prime minister didn’t take that into account in his intentionally divisive rant. The entire treatment of Ms. Lich from the beginning, to her jailing, to her harassment by prosecutors (which is how I see it) and to this now ongoing, belaboured trial is simply a disgrace to the idea of Canadian democracy.
I shall not mention freezing the bank accounts of citizens exercising their civil liberties, though I am still puzzled about where the authority to do so came from, and even more puzzled why in a huge caucus and a fat cabinet there were not a few stray MPS who said “Enough! The cabinet post is not worth it, and being a Liberal even on the backbench does not leave me blind to grand overreach and vindictive actions.”
However, in balance, I must report that Trudeau did respect and support the Black Lives Matter protests, even to the point — never before done by any prime minister — of joining one of their demonstrations, and further freezing himself into full genuflection mode as a signal of his deep concordance with this dubious and at times riotous manifestation.
Liberty of conscience was obviously not on his forgivably forgetful mind when he banned from candidacy to his caucus anyone for whom abortion is an issue of conscience and religion. Like Barack Obama did on same-sex issues, Trudeau has “evolved” on this theme.
Just a footnote — when a politician says he’s evolved, he is not referring to natural history or Darwin. Rather, he means he’s found a bigger voter pool.
Respect for other viewpoints? Surely Alberta and Saskatchewan are deeply respected, especially now. Steven Guilbeault — odd that so frantic a one-issue personality from Greenpeace should hold a cabinet seat — must be falling over himself with respect these days for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
Of course not. The gravest departure from that fine prime ministerial statement quoted above is the Trudeau government’s insolent and domineering approach to Alberta and the oil industry. There is no respect, no tolerance, no “see the other side,” if that side disagrees, does not accept or questions the propagandistic juggernaut of holy climate change. The Trudeau administration has elevated this one issue above all others, to the massive cost of the economy, the suffocation of development, and the generation of a genuine and deep understanding by Westerners that the federal government is not a partner, but a lord of Confederation, licensed to disrupt and displace the entire main industry of a province.
Danielle Smith is right. She should, as she has, tell Guilbeault (climber of towers, loser of court cases), and his boss that Alberta’s future is not to be a casualty of their hypnosis on this issue and their intention to sacrifice the province for the condescending applause of the UN’S climate junta, Bill Gates, Al Gore and Greta Thunberg.
Trudeau took Thunberg’s counsel. But would he meet any of the hundreds of better minds that question, rightly, this whole gambit of climate alarmism? It is a snare and a delusion. The Liberals can’t clean up water on First Nations, but they wish to govern the next hundred, thousand years of global climate.
Delusion? It is madness. So is believing a tax on gasoline in Bonavista will change the cloud cover in Beijing.
It surely, more than any other issue, proves that for this government, this cabinet and this prime minister, “respect and tolerance” for different viewpoints is just a phrase, a bundle of words with no energy or meaning or depth of commitment. Very much like the tag “diversity is our strength.” Myself, I’d go with unity.
Trudeau’s gutted. The Liberals better hope the trailer-hitch with the NDP holds. As for the new image-making hire (marketing guru Max Valiquette), alas, an empty move.
There are images that even a Michelangelo couldn’t repair.
