March 29, 2024 - 1:00pm
After a year of declining poll numbers, failed resets and embarrassing scandals, Justin Trudeau’s government is now experiencing a slow-motion collapse, a kind of political “slow heat death”.
Usually, leaders who have stayed in power for nearly a decade, as Trudeau has, can look forward to leaving behind a legacy in the form of a signature policy that will endure beyond their own political lives. But the Canadian PM may not even have that, because on 1 April Canada’s federal carbon tax is set to increase, and what had been a relatively uncontroversial measure when it was introduced nearly five years ago has become nothing short of a political firestorm.
The centrepiece of Trudeau’s climate change plan has aroused a broad array of opposition, not only from Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, who are pushing back against what they call the “April Fools’ tax hike”, but even among fellow Liberals and other progressives at provincial level.
The last remaining Liberal provincial premier in Canada, Andrew Furey of Newfoundland and Labrador, has described the carbon tax as “net negative” and “a punishment for residents at a time of soaring prices and stagnant wages”, while the leader of the Ontario Liberals, Bonnie Crombie, announced that a carbon tax would not be part of her platform. Something similar is also happening with the Left-wing opposition in the oil-rich province of Alberta. On Tuesday, Trudeau issued a challenge to all anti-carbon tax provinces to produce their own alternatives to Ottawa’s carbon levy, something they are unlikely to do. Clearly, these politicians are feeling the need to distance themselves from the increasingly toxic Trudeau brand.
The idea of putting a price on carbon was once heralded by economists as an efficient, market-based method to spur decarbonisation, and had been endorsed by right-of-centre policymakers in Canada. When Trudeau implemented carbon pricing in 2019, amid broad levels of public support, it seemed like an easy policy and political victory. But subsequent bouts of inflation and a worsening cost-of-living crisis made an anodyne measure feel like an unnecessary burden for many.
For a prime minister who supposedly came to power on the back of exceptional political communication skills, Trudeau appears to have dropped the ball in failing to register the deep dissatisfaction his policies have aroused in the Canadian public. Indeed, the carbon tax is just the latest example of his long list of failures in governance. Under his watch, a severe housing shortage has made a middle-class standard of living unattainable for many Canadians; a dysfunctional immigration system has made competition for jobs and resources more extreme; and a botched government travel app has laid bare Ottawa’s tendencies toward wasteful spending and administrative incompetence.
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SubscribeI think people are sick of being lectured to by some smarmy rich kid with limited intelligence, who lives in a bubble. His response to opponents is always the same – call them racist, misogynistic, anti-science homophobes. He never engages in debate because he’s incapable of it. On the same day we get his carbon tax increase, federal politicians get a wage increase, making them the second highest paid politicians in the world.
He will go down in history as the most reviled politician in Canadian history. He won the last two elections with the lowest vote totals of any Prime Minister in
Canadian history, forming successive minority govts, thanks to the unflappable support of the NDP Party, whose leader is despised almost as much as Trudeau, and will almost certainly be kicked to the curb by his own party too.
I’m surprised he’s ever won an election. There’s something creepily sinister about the man.
He won three elections in a row. He will go down as one of Canada’s most successful politicians!
Margaret Thatcher won three elections in a row didn’t she. And Tony Blair!
…Agreed. A natural born Lucifer.
Black face is just misunderstood.
“I think people are sick of being lectured to by some smarmy rich kid with limited intelligence, who lives in a bubble”
So you think Polievre is better? Why don’t you tell us about his wide range of experience, Jimmy?
This should be funny!
Infinitely better. A good example is pp asking the premier of bc to join in opposition to the carbon tax. He declined with a snear, thus telling every voter outside of Victoria and Vancouver that the provincial government does care about their problems.
And surprise surprise the BC Conservative Party has surged past the BC United centrist party and is now threatening the NDP. In a very real way Trudeau and his NDP sidekicks have destroyed the progressive brand in Canada by their refusal to acknowledge ordinary Canadians don’t accept the more deranged aspects of ‘social justice.’ For example BC United used to be called the ‘BC Liberals’ but changes the name to remove the association with Trudeau’s party.
Pollievre was a federal cabinet minister under a previous prime minister, and has decades of experience as an MP. Before becoming prime minister Trudeau’s only job experience was being a middle-school drama teacher, though he did moonlight occasionally as a fabulous sultan of the Orient.
I guess the MPs and Ministers need the pay increase to pay the carbon tax. According to Canadian law as stated by the Canadian Taxpayers Association, “MPs give themselves pay raises each year on April 1, based on the average annual increase in union contracts with corporations that have more than 500 employees.”
I am not Canadian, so I leave to my neighbors to the north to run their country as they see fit by MPs they elect, and recommend that MPs cannot get a pay increase until after an election.
Yes, it just screams conflict of interest as they “negotiate” those contracts.
Not to mention the carve outs on the carbon tax for jurisdictions he wants votes in.
Is there a special place in hell for this muppet of all muppets?
Maybe he could be sent into perpetual orbit around the earth with fellow-travellers Saint Jacinda of the Antipodes and Ouuir Nicola.
Talk about ‘Huis Clos’, talk about ‘hell is other people’.
Thats almost better than the article!
Yes, the eight circle of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The second pit with feces will be perfect for Turdeau and his other WEF stooges/ettes.
Who knew that elections come with consequences.
All Trudeau has is exceptional communication skills. He’s an incompetent utopian like his father.
HIs communication skills rival that of Kamala Harris. Milquetoast word salad presented with an unctuous voice that, when listened to for any longer than 30 seconds, has the disturbing effect of making my testicles recede.
Toooo much information I feel.
You are jesting of course.
Fidel was much more competent than his son.
Canada – or Tranada as it is now popularly known – is also the most indoctrinated country in the world when it comes to gender ideology – Trudeau has gone to insane lengths to accommodate it. He’s a rotten influence on world politics.
I love that viral clip where he can’t get all the alphabet acronyms out in the right order; just like Ouuir Nicola in meltdown mode trying to explain when a male rapist isn’t allowed in a women’s prison.
He’s a rotten man in thrall to the WEF, not to mention China.
And children’s health.
At first glance, with such a Prime Minister, one can only feel sorry for Canadians.
At the second and subsequent glances, you understand that there is nothing to feel sorry for them. They got what they deserved.
.
I remember the ending of W. S. Maugham’s wonderful story “The Luncheon”: “But I have had my revenge at last. I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the result with complacency. Today she weighs twenty-one stone.”
What a great story that was.
Trudeau’s time may be coming to an end but he leaves Canada in far better place than he found it and his record of three consecutive lection victories leaves him as one of the most successful politicians of recent times.
Polievre won’t last long. He’s Trump lite and the Canadian people won’t tolerate that for long – far too smart for that…
Now I know that you’re jesting. Do you live in Canada?
2 countries with approx. the same economical structure, GDP per capita in $ thousands
.
Canada 2009 40.8, 2021 55.0 +34%
.
Australia 2009 42.8, 2021 64.5 +51%
.
In 1960 Canada 2.26 per capita, Australia 1.81 per capita.
You live in a progressive bubble, my little friend.
Maybe I just won’t live to see this ‘better place’ he apparently brought Canada too, as I’m one of those ‘undesirables’ likely to be euthanized by the state under our forcibly-expanded MAID laws.
He really does push all your buttons, doesn’t he! These comments are hilarious!
What specific policy or legislation should he be lauded for? Legalizing weed? Euthanasia?
Since when has Trudeau had exceptional communication skills? He and his not-so-happy band seem to have only one thing in common and that is being tone deaf to the opinions of a sizeable number of Canadians, dare I say majority.
IMO, Trudeau’s trust-fund doofus persona deflects from the fact that he leads a Liberal party of WEF-inspired Great Reset socialists. What is not usually mentioned is that Canadians should have seen this foolishness coming as Trudeau’s closest advisors were former policy advisors to the Ontario Liberal party that is infamous for bankrupting that province before being voted into oblivion where it remains to this day. Green New Deal eco fantasies were a major failure on top of the usual incompetence. One of their ‘brilliant’ (yet thankfully unrealized) proposals was to sign a carbon-credit trading deal with California (?!).
The Trudeau Liberals were able to push climate hysteria when such feel-good ideology didn’t actually cost anything but then Covid happened. Then interest rates happened. Then inflation happened. The Liberals don’t have any answers.
I was one of the few who saw through Trudeau’s grift back in 2015. A few years later I actually got angrily called out by some close friends for daring to joke about his similarities to a Canadian version of Trump (albeit in an admittedly less-nauseating package). Fast forward a decade and suddenly it’s cool and hip to rag on ol’ Justin, and no one cares to remember how they talked down to me a few years ago for not being on team Trudeau.
Oh, but I’m not bitter about it or anything….
“For a prime minister who supposedly came to power on the back of exceptional political communication skills …” I think you give him too much credit. He speaks like his head is made of wood. He was the beneficiary of a fawning mainstream media, hyper-excited by the idea of repeating the sycophancy that kept his father in power for 16 years and sold all those papers. Now, no one reads the papers so people are not being distracted from the damage of his oh-so-many dumb, badly implemented policies. Most of the MSM still loves him because they survive on his subsidies. I don’t love him, because my money is being used to pay for papers I don’t read and I think he’s an idiot.
There is no getting away from the fact that he is a tall, good looking white man with a full head of hair. If that doesn’t entitle him to political success, I don’t know what does.
The EU, its Legacy Statelet UK, Canada and Biden’s USA are all now Progressive Coercive States. And all are failing in their 10-30 Year Revolutionary experiments for the exact same reasons. All are undemocratic – run by permanent Top Down unelected Technocracies. All are content to rule coercively as in the lockdown nightmare. All are driven by extreme ideological credos which all wholly are unmandated and hostile to the will of their peoples. The most potent: Climate hysteria and Pol Pot style Net Zero Degrowth policies which are shattering our economies and will see SA style energy blackouts within 10 years. Judicial overreach and extreme DEI race and Equality manias which have overturned the very idea of meritocracy and imperil communal harmony. Regulatory anti business Red Tape oppression and hostility to (‘discriminatory’) enterprise and wealth). Magic money excess and punitive high taxation to sustain now bankrupt Red Robbo States and a detached, failing and hostile Public Sector Blob. Mass uncontrolled immigration and open border multiculturalism which have made property unaffordable for a majority and have shattered our unprepared public services. All parties like Trudeaus which serve this Coercive Progressive State are set to be punished and extirpated for these horrors, beginning with the Progressive Quisling/ Fake Tories. The more naturally Progressive Labour Party will inherit the 30 year mess )not by virtue of any ideas, simply the 14 Year Math) and double down on it. They will in turn be extripated within 5 years. But of course neither of these political parties nor the wilfully emasculated Parliament actually rule and govern. Power and Progressive principles are embedded in Law, the Blob, Media, Public Sector, Uni sector and of course culture itself. Thst was the whole point. So escape from the Revolution can only emerge with its total collapse, the seeds of which are well sewn already. Insanity. But that is how this Revolution plays out.
I agree that he is an obscene man and a person who is Woke to his core and with an evil drive to do bad to good people.
BUT how and why was he able to win the elections?
Because everything you said in the first sentence is utter stupidity.
Do I win a prize?!?!
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Probably for much the same reasons as Bill Clinton got two terms.
Can’t understand why people ever voted for him
How about this one: an election must be held by October 20, 2025. 80 MPs, including 33 on his side, will see their pensions vest on October 21. So those recently elected MPs will likely never see their pensions.
But wait- Trudeau changed the law to extend the date to October 27. So now those MPs have a vested interest in keeping Trudeau’s minority government in power.
This is the most cynical political move ever.
Just more of the same stealing from the people of Canada for their benefit.