In the 2015 federal elections, Justin Trudeau won a majority government after convincing Canadian voters that he was different from other politicians, and that he was offering genuine change. But has Trudeau the younger ushered in real change in Canada and in Canadian politics? Not by a long shot.
Most
of the change that Trudeau has brought to Canada is simply a change back to old
Liberal policies. In fact, most of what the Trudeau Liberals have done has all
had to do with reversing the policy decisions of former Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and the Conservatives. Easing requirements for Canadian citizenship, increased
environmental regulations, a return to the long-form census, more emphasis on
multilateralism in Canadian foreign policy, you name it, it’s all just been
about changing back, not moving forward. Whatever actual changes Trudeau’s
Liberal government has made are either cosmetic or consist of policies stolen
from other parties.
For
example, Prime Minister Trudeau has always made a big deal about having gender
parity in his cabinet, “because it’s 2015,” he said, shortly after winning the
elections that year. He is supposed to be a feminist, after all. Yet he has no
problem keeping the centuries-old first-past-the-post electoral system, even
though he promised that the elections of 2015 would be the last to take place
using the unfair and outdated method. I’m sure he is also well-aware that countries
with systems of proportional representation tend to elect more women and
minorities. But of course, why do away with the system that has made his
Liberal Party the natural governing party of Canada? Yes, a cabinet with gender
parity makes for good optics, but it doesn’t ensure that more women will have a
greater chance of being elected to political office in the long term.
In
fact, Trudeau has been an impediment to women’s success in politics. Just ask
former Liberal Jody Wilson-Raybould. She was Trudeau’s Attorney-General and
Minister of Justice until early 2019, when allegations surfaced that the prime
minister tried to pressure her into granting construction and engineering
giant, SNC Lavalin, a deal that would have saved it from prosecution for suspected
bribery. Wilson-Raybould wouldn’t give in to Trudeau’s wishes, and so was
demoted to the Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs. But soon after, she resigned from
cabinet and bravely spoke out against Trudeau’s handling of the SNC Lavalin
case. For this, she was ultimately expelled from the Liberal Party caucus. So
much for Trudeau’s supposed love of strong female leaders. So much for
Trudeau’s feminism. The fact is that Justin Trudeau has the ability to be just
as arrogant and corrupt as any other person who has ever sat in the Prime
Minister’s Office.
Fortunately
for Trudeau, the SNC Lavalin scandal and his poor treatment of Jody
Wilson-Raybould, did not cost him his job as Prime Minister. He won re-election
last year, albeit with a minority government. During the campaign, and even
before it, Trudeau always delighted in mentioning how the Canada Child Benefit,
which his government introduced in 2016, was lifting many Canadian children out
of poverty. He wasn’t lying, for a change. According to
Statistics Canada, there were 278,000 fewer children living below the poverty
line in 2017, compared to 2015, when the Trudeau Liberals were first elected.
This is good news that Prime Minister Trudeau and his Liberals have repeatedly
taken credit for. They are not deserving of any credit for it, however, because
the program was never their idea in the first place. It was, in fact, an idea
stolen from the Conservative Party.
In
2006, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives won a minority government. Among the
promises in Harper’s platform was to give each Canadian family with children a
direct payment that would allow them to pay for whatever daycare they deemed
appropriate. Ironically, this was an idea opposed by the then Paul Martin-led
Liberals, who instead, wanted to create a federal government-run daycare
program. To make a long story short, the idea of giving government funds
directly to parents for their children was originally a Conservative idea, not
a Liberal one. In other words, the Trudeau Liberals are plagiarists. They rip
off ideas from other parties and present them as their own. Plagiarizing in
university can get you expelled, but apparently in Canadian politics, it gets
you elected.
And
don’t think for a second that the Liberals only rip off ideas from the Conservatives.
When Trudeau was first elected in 2015, his whole campaign might as well have
been taken straight out of the NDP playbook. The Trudeau Liberals positioned
themselves the furthest to the left out of all three major federal parties. So
much so, in fact, that they managed to siphon off most of the votes that had
once gone to the NDP, thereby getting elected with a majority government and
relegating the real placeholders of the left to third party status, once again.
The
Trudeau Liberals have been riding high based on the fact that Canada has not
been as adversely affected by COVID-19 as some other countries, most notably
our neighbours to the south. Actually, the fact that the closest world leader
that Canadians can compare Trudeau to is none other than U.S. President Donald
Trump, makes the Prime Minister look a lot better than he should be given
credit for. The reality is, however, that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is
neither a harbinger of genuine change, nor is he any different than other
politicians. His policies are recycled from the Liberals of the past, or ideas
stolen from others, and not one thing he has done has led to fundamental change
for the better in Canada.
