Nov 12
23
Shooting at the West: Rod Taylor
Justin Trudeau is not being honest when he tries to hide behind an imaginary “Conservative smear campaign”. Remarks he made in 2010 are coming back to haunt him. In those remarks, he blamed Albertans for some of the country’s woes. “Canada isn’t doing well right now because it’s Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda. It doesn’t work,” he said. He followed that up by agreeing with the following opinion: “Canada is better served when there are more Quebecers in charge than Albertans”.
Some things never change…but in this case, something has: Mr. Trudeau is now running for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, hoping to ride the coattails of his petulant and dismissive father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the man who is often given the credit (or the blame) for patriating the Constitution and introducing the Charter which put the words and freedoms of Canadians on trial before human rights tribunals and changed our centuries-old tradition of Common Law.
Young Trudeau shares his father’s penchant for flamboyant showmanship but he lacks the depth and uncanny political instincts of his progenitor. Pierre Trudeau, for all his callous disregard of the common man and the common law, had earned his stripes in battle and—without a brand-name already enshrined in history. Justin spouts off and ignores facts but expects that the grateful citizenry will nonetheless rally to his side out of reverence. If they do, it will be one more sign that the people of Canada are undernourished by the thin gruel dished out to them by the narrow secular press and unable any longer to read between the lines.
To pit Quebec against Alberta may be a strategy that pleases some in the East but it cannot be defended by any honest thinkers in Canada today. Numbers are important in politics, so stroking a militant anti-western bias may seem a logical choice when seeking seats in the populous provinces of Quebec and Ontario. However, Canadians across the country also have a sense of justice and a charitable decency. To hint that folks born in the rugged West are incapable of managing the affairs of state is to indicate a sense of royal entitlement that even today’s arrogant intelligentsia and biased press may not buy.
What no Canadian should buy is the disingenuous defence that his remarks are being taken “out of context”. What he really means is that his remarks are being publicly reviewed without his permission. For someone like Mr. Trudeau, this is not an invitation to apologise but a challenge to spin. He may have forgotten, bright as he is, that the audio recording devices of today demand some accountability in spite of one’s lineage.