Patrick Meagher
Editor
Canada’s main three federal political parties are drifting farther to the left.
Use the year 2000 as a baseline and the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP are extreme. When it comes to family values and social issues, Canada’s big three parties are to the left of Lenin.
On fiscal issues, all three parties seem ready to spend more of your money. The Conservatives, however, have an edge with voters by offering a better childcare policy — a refundable tax credit. The NDP has predictably offered the moon and the stars and sees no balanced budget for the foreseeable future. The Liberal Party also dodges fiscal responsibility and has a history of reneging on its major promises such as electoral reform and transparent government.
This time around, we’re faced with voting for the best of underwhelming choices. Except that this year, one party is clearly a ballooning bag of stink. It’s odour is so bad that the Conservative Party looks like a saviour. I have never heard so many people advising others to vote strategically; telling them to sacrifice their first choice if that will defeat a Liberal candidate.
While strategic voting has less of an impact on rural Ontario, where the Conservative Party dominates, promoting this strategy reveals a level of distrust of government never seen before. To be fair to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he executed the plan that gave us this crisis of confidence. He is the first prime minister to be convicted of an ethics infraction. There’s the infamous grope that he remembers differently after saying all women should be believed. His government refused to provide information on issues of public concern. He pounded Canada’s oil industry and so on. The list is very, very, long.
What Trudeau says can be worse. National Post editor Jonathan Kay reported that Trudeau told us that our country has committed genocide and is still committing genocide and that is why we should vote for him. Because when he’s in charge we get genocide?
There are Trudeau plans that should scare people. He wants to change the law to muzzle freedom of speech. He wants to control media content and he needs a majority government to move closer towards that totalitarian end.
But the earth is moving under Trudeau’s feet, as protesters shut him down at rallies, and Afghanistan is on his head. He knew for months that U.S. President Joe Biden was going to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. Trudeau, like Biden, is having a hard time moulding arguments to convince anyone that he’s got this one under control or that he even cares about what happens to his own people.
How unfortunate is the Liberal video ad that includes Trudeau saying, “ Let’s keep working to make things better — and leave no one behind.” More than 1,200 Canadians and Canadian allies were unnecessarily left behind under barbarian Taliban rule on Sept. 1.
As opposition surges against the Liberal Party in this election that Trudeau called and no one wanted, it is now far from clear that Sept. 20 will give Trudeau his Liberal majority. It could just as likely be a Liberal lynching. Or anything in between.
Patrick Meagher is editor of Farmers Forum and can be reached at editor@farmersforum.com
