In my last post I warned that Jason Kenney's imperial ambitions could help take this country to a very bad place.
Even if they did help re-elect Justin Trudeau.
But when I wrote about how Trudeau should tame Kenney, I didn't know that the two would meet in Ottawa yesterday.
Or that Kenney would put on such an outrageous performance.
Squealing like a hog, and blaming Trudeau for fanning the flames of separatism.
Alberta’s new premier sent a brazen message to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday, when he raised the spectre of a national unity crisis and warned the Liberal government that its environmental policies will landlock Canada’s oil reserves and fan the flames of separatist angst in his province.
The same flames Kenney has been pouring gasoline on for months, for crass political purposes.
And needless to say sounding like an absolute fanatic, or maniac.
By mid-morning during his daylong visit to Parliament Hill, Jason Kenney had invoked Quebec separatist icon René Lévesque, resurrected memories of 1980s energy policy that still taints the Trudeau name in the West, and threatened to cut off oil shipments and launch a constitutional challenge to stop federal environmental legislation he opposes.
Who would take this country to the verge of a potentially catastrophic national unity crisis, or even a civil war.
For just like him, some of the far-right loons he is inflaming with his toxic Trudeau hate, are a threat to this country and its values.
Some of them are dangerous.
A man was arrested for uttering threats at a Mississauga fundraising event attended Wednesday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the RCMP said in a statement posted by Peel Region police.
And crazy.
Several protesters outside claimed solidarity with the “yellow vest movement,” claiming they were demanding their “rights and freedoms back” and “an escape from servitude.”
The group held a banner blocking part of the entrance to the convention centre reading: “No Trudeau — No UN — Canada First.” Other individuals using megaphones calling attendees “communists” and the PM a “traitor.”
As crazy as Kenney's claims that Bill 69 would endanger national unity, when that bill makes absolute sense in a country already being ravaged by climate change.
Kenney's threats to hold a referendum on equalization payments if Bill 69 is not killed, is crude blackmail verging on treason.Bill-69 is intended to overhaul how major resource projects are approved in Canada #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/9dzTwnS9dr— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) May 2, 2019
And it's clear we can't count on Andrew Scheer to reign him in.
I’m proud to call my friend and former colleague @JKenney the Premier of Alberta. He will be a strong voice for his province. Together we will fight for the men and women who work in Alberta’s natural resource sector and the people they support. pic.twitter.com/x6FhmsMjkc— Andrew Scheer (@AndrewScheer) May 3, 2019
So I'm glad to see how the Trudeau-Kenney meeting ended, with the prime minister's body language making it clear that enough is enough.
And that Kenney's separatist dreams are in for a rude awakening, as is his oily Holy War.
You know, in the U.K. the Westminster Parliament has declared a climate emergency. Whether that mean anything remains to be seen.
But the Liberal government can't do that, at least not right now, for this is a petrostate if ever there was one, and it would tear this country apart.
But Justin Trudeau is bravely leading the fight against climate change.
Trying to convince the greedy that a carbon tax is the best way to fight the climate monster before it ruins them, or kills their children.
Fighting off Kenney, Ford, Scheer, and the other members of the Con Carbon Gang, as well as their media stooges,
While doing his best to hold this fractious country together.
The Cons hate him because they know he's the only leader who can defeat them.
And for that alone he deserves the support of all decent Canadians...
24 comments:
Alberta is landlocked! Think about this!
You really have to give him credit, for going out there and facing these thugs and withstanding the four years of radicalized Con/Trumpist propaganda and smear campaigns that he has already. I don't even know why he bothers with these unhinged ingrates, but that's a Trudeau for you. If Canadians are cool with the kind of bile being flung at him because they hate the man, hate his last name, hate his father, hate that he "doesn't speak French well enough" or that he does speak French at all, hate him for all these ridiculous and petty grievances, fake scandals, and conspiracy theories borne of lies and their own insecurities, and give him the boot? It'll reveal the true character of this country and put an end to the myth of "Canadian exceptionalism."
If people go to the ballot box in October and demonstrate that they care more about their own insular "pocketbook issues" like saving a few cents on gas so they can afford 99cent beer, than the most important existential crisis facing us all, that's a reflection on them and not on Justin Trudeau. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House and got sent packing -- thanks to the dirty-tricks right and backstabbing from within his own party. Today he builds homes for the poor. If people-kindness isn't enough to save Trudeau's political career from an onslaught of hate, then it will serve him well outside the Ottawa swamp. God love him, he is fighting the good fight until the last bell rings.
For now, Canadians still have a choice: Trudeau or consequences. Hire the incompetent meme weasel Scheer who is no leader but takes his marching orders from Herrball Harper and the bombastic thugs in Edmonton and Queen's Park, or re-hire the imperfect and badly bruised but still courageous Trudeau, who has done his damnedest to do what's best for Canada in spite of the forces of petro-populist Putinists engulfing the world and the knives coming out for him. If they choose wrong, all I care about is that the man is able to rebuild his good name and go out with his head held high.
A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
Simon & Garfunkel, "The Boxer"
You expect Cons to "think"? XD
Here's what I think. Democracy has obviously proven to be a failed experiment in the hands of an ignorant citizenry and self-interested media manipulators. With the royal baby soon to arrive, I say let's make monarchism great again. Jihad Jason wants to be the ayatollah of the petro-caliphate of Al-Bertonia. Drug Lord wants to be the golden-showers cartel king of his own eponymous "nation." The M$M and their corporate backers have a lot of money riding on this handicapped horse race between a bleeding unicorn (who they've beat into glue) and a braying jackass. They really want Andrew Scheisskopf to be the illegitimate usurper and boy führer in short pants who deposes the Noble Duke of Mount Royal to be a useless figurehead of Tweedle Dug and Tweedle Dumb. The idea is to have Ottawa be a mere pretend playhouse where he can read the scripts given to him by his puppeteers, most of which no doubt will be drawn in crayon to make it easier for him to understand. So Trump's "style" of iron-fisted idjits may indeed be working, as Thug said on Fox News the other night. To paraphrase Don Henley, pity the unfortunate subjects living under this tired old man their lessers elected king.
Fine then. Democracy's a dud and we've entered the age of basic dictatorships (or dick tater's ships). But why should the good guys have to live in exile every four to eight years when the Cup changes hands between red and blue? I see no reason why liberals shouldn't have their own Canalot. Let's crowdfund the purchase of Disneyland and go live at the Trudeau/Clinton/Obama compound. We need our own separatist movement to counter theirs! They keep setting up Jonestowns everywhere they go, so why don't we ever set up our own Hillaryland, Obamastan or Trutopia?
Justin looks as if he's ready to give Kenney a left hook. Instead of the "Shawinigan Handshake", it would be a "Deftly Lefty" followed by two sounds, a smack and a sack of shit hitting the ground, ka-thump. I'm not condoning this nor am I criticizing it. After being relentlessly attacked by these far-right freaks for the last ten years, JT has shown a remarkable ability to look the other way but everyone has a breaking point. You keep poking the bear or yanking his chain and look out. I just hope it happens off camera if it does.
You're right, Simon. JT needs our support in these trying times and I believe the majority of Canadians will back him on this. Welcome back and keep up the good fight my friend.
JD
Yep, a landlocked "country" of 4 million who needs access to CANADIAN coastal waters.
I had written "four years" of right-wing attacks above. I forgot that he's been piled on ever since he contemplated running for MP. Heck, you can add fifty more years of Trudeau derangement syndrome by proxy, considering the absolute irrational hatred for his father that gets piled onto the (un)fortunate son. I think if Pierre had to contend with social media and 24/7 news he wouldn't have survived 1972. At least Robert Stanfield was a respectable statesman. Today's GOP HarperCons are absolute gutter trash.
But if the majority of Canadians are dumb and/or spiteful enough to go along with it, well, like I said... if Klanney wants his oily caliphate, Dug wants to invite Fox Nation into Ford Nation, and Andy Doody wants Parliament to be his Pee Wee Playhouse and Internet troll den, then maybe us good guys need to tell them to fuddle-duddle, start our own separatist movement and set up a Disneyland micronation under the House of Trudeau. Liberals need to get religion, even if it's only on the surface. Justin can be our Joseph Smith, Obama our Haile Selassie, and Hillary our QE2.0. And why not? The Japanese love their social-democratic, humanitarian emperor more than the imperialist, free-marketeer PM!
Let's have ourselves an exodus and a compound of our own. At least until climate change sinks the Turks & Caicos, anyway...
Simon this is all madness but Kenney just looks like a madman and is a madman. No respect for Canada or Canadians. He will create chaos just to look like a tough guy. A guy who has done nothing in life but live off the taxpayer as a flaming right wing extremeist politico. He can create real damage to the nation. The oil biz is done — he spreads lies and myths about pipelines as did Notley — in fact she created this hysteria when people I know in the biz have said the TMX is the wrong pipeline and will not change the math on the tar sands. Politicians use the oil industry to further their far right agenda and to dismantle environmental policies but have no understanding of what’s really going on with it. There’s never going to be a biz case for expansion of the tar sands ever.
I hope Trudeau stands firm. Writeoff AB and save Canada. Delay the decision on the TMX until after the election and if it gets twinned no bitumen thru it just refined product to force Alberta to add value to this resource. No do over for a bitumen spill so it’s reckless insanity to be shipping it thru the inlet and open ocean. It’s all so depressing — it was a bad morning to wake up to that creep as king of Alberta and all those that voted for him expecting the big money to start rolling in when it’s not going to happen regardless of how many pipelines get built any which way. FL
I'm just as worried the fake scandal has proven too damaging for Trudeau to recover from in time, and that Scheer would give his "friend and colleague" a rubber stamp to run roughshod over the rest of the country. Let alone the bullshit police investigations the Cons are already preparing to go after Trudeau as "criminal" à la "Crooked Hillary" and now "Crooked Biden." Sounds familiar. Russia wants the Arctic; Putin hates Trudeau and Freeland as does Trump, and both Putin and Trump are just as much rabid homophobes as Kenney and Scheer. Fascist thugocracies are known for throwing their opponents behind bars and/or "defeating" them in sham elections with phony corruption allegations. Some nutcase tried to go after Trudeau with a "citizens' arrest" on grounds that he "obstructed justice." We know the Kochtopus has its slimy tentacles in this clusterfuck, but is Moscow involved in this sticky crap or do they at least stand to benefit from it too?
Why do you try to paint conservatives with a wide brush? I don't hate trudeau because of his policies, I hate him because he's incompetent. I haven't quite gotten a good read on scheer. I don't know yet whether or not he would be a good prime minister. But the bar has been set pretty low by trudeau.
He's bungled foreign relations, he's put the country in massive debt, and he's shown he's willing to put virtue signaling ahead of canadas interests.
In the case of alberta's pipeline,even if i disagreed, i would respect him at the very least if he were to actually commit to whether or not he supports getting it built. If the oil industry is being put on the chopping block, then we need to commit to diversifying alberta's industry. But Trudeau doesn't have a plan and is telling Albertans he's fighting for them, while letting their livelihoods die.
People like you are the problem today. Liberal or conservative, you view the opposite side as the enemy and apply any kind of stereotype and image to them so that their problems seem trivial.
A man who's worked on the oil riggs his whole life and now is facing losing his house is just a big cry baby. Should have chosen a job that doesn't pollute the earth! He's just greedy! He shouldn't be trying to maintain his standard of living, he should be virtuous and think of the environment!
Maybe he should, but that doesn't make you any less of a self righteous douchebag.
I’ve been listening closely to that guy Jason for a few months and I still can’t figure out what he wants. If it was just the job, he’s got it now. But I guess he’ll have to keep this blather going until he decides what he wants next and comes up with a new routine.
Secessionism is to Canada what Mom’s Apple Pie is to America. My advice is to deal with Canada’s version of the yellow-vesters the way we do any other opportunity that involves diversity: take some federal funds and buy them a building where their community can gather to celebrate its culture and create a few jobs for the ringleaders. That should put a lid on it.
The USA is running a Koas campaign worldwide everywhere there is oil. Thinkaboot it.
Hi Unknown
I was going to suggest you go to both the Conservative and Liberal websites and then decide where the fear, hate and division comes from but then realized it would be a useless exercise as you opening comments indicate you have already been infected by the hate virus. Personally I always viewed politics as a longer term directional thing sometimes voting for the Conservative sometimes for the Liberals, all that changed somewhere around 2010. It was the Harper saber rattling that got me, suddenly we pivoted from a peaceful nation trying repair some of the damage in the world to seeing mortal enemies in places like Libya, Russia, the Communist hordes ( remember the statues)and finally some 10 years later our own people. Funny how hate works!
Although they are less than perfect, I could go on to list the Liberal accomplishments such as the child care payment that has lifted hundreds of thousands of Canadian kids out of poverty and even less spectacular things such as line 9 expansion that takes Alberta crude to Montreal but suspect it would be a waste of time. Hopefully the hate virus can be contained before Canada become one of those weak sick countries that are easy pickings for moneyed vultures.
RT
Hi RT
Seems the hate virus really is personal, as that US academic's paper points out -- even, especially, in Quebec. No one cares about policies when they've been whipped into a demented ad-hominem frenzy, as Michael Coren pointed out in this article from January. Trudeau's memoir offers a very clever metaphor -- "common ground" -- for his view of the country that, sadly, seems destined for the same fate as his family growing up. Canada really is a dysfunctional family on the verge of crumbling into the sum of its parts no matter how much Justin tries to bring disparate and quarreling actors to the table. Reading his book, you get a genuine sense that, like many children of divorce, he is deeply wounded by his inability as a boy to patch his parents' doomed relationship. It's possible, likely in fact, that he sees the nation unraveling now, and his struggles to keep it together (particularly after the "scandal" that gutted the already fractious party he worked so hard to rebuild, and which drove voters in scatters to the extreme left and right), as mirroring those troubled tug-of-war schisms he witnessed growing up. Like I said, my heart aches for him. Empathy, that's why I am a liberal.
Yet the major distinction between the irreconcilable differences between Margaret and Pierre, and the inter-provincial warfare that shit-disturbers like antipope Kenney are stoking with B.C. (home of the noble Sinclairs) and Quebec (home of the noble Trudeaus), is that Margaret and Pierre's difficult relationship didn't change the fact that they loved their kids and, despite their evident incompatibility, each other. Meanwhile, some 35-40 years later, the only "common ground," it seems, that can be found among the provinces is irrational, venomous hatred of the younger Trudeau and the ghost of his old man -- and, more disturbingly, a desire to tear up the national pre-nup he made his crowning achievement in 1982. They have come not only to bury Caesar (in his 100th year at that), but to piss upon his grave and throw his son in the dirt. Divide and conquer, that's the Con way. It would make for a compelling miniseries if it wasn't so tragic and affecting real people's lives, not only the Canadian public at large but Justin Trudeau himself and the young family he has now. The young Caesar, untimely ripped. The last great Roman who put all his efforts into uniting the disparate empire even as the vandals are looking to sack it.
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." -W.B. Yeats
Hi Marmalade....yes, Alberta is landlocked, that's why Lord Kenney wants to turn B.C. into Greater Alberta. The oil pimps need more lebensraum....☠
Hi Jackie....no I don't like that idea. I'd rather see Scheer, Kenney and the rest of the ugly Cons sent to live in a Disneyland Zoo. Where they could parade around in tattered royal robes, give themselves fancy titles, and the paying public could pelt them with peanuts....
Hi unknown...I don't paint conservatives with a broad brush, I just target the ugly un-Canadian mob that bombards us with their grotesque hate mongering attack ads every day of the year. Also, Trudeau is not incompetent.The economy is stronger than it has been for about forty years, and he has improved the image of this country in the eyes of the world, not worsened it.. And lastly but not leastly, I have never suggested oil rig workers are cry babies. I understand their angst and their anger, and I blame the Cons for leading them on, instead of creating new and greener jobs for them. So while I normally avoid using vulgar language, I think I'll make an exception and say you're the one acting like a douchebag...
Hi RT....thank you for that excellent comment. I think unknown is sincere but is clearly terribly mistaken. Anyone who doesn't realize that the Cons are the source of most of the hatred swirling around this country must be blind or really dumb. Like you I hope the hate virus can be contained and eventually eradicated before it kills this country. But I have to admit that I am not as optimistic as I once was...
Hi Jackie...Great comment, although it saddens me to admit that the country Canada used to be is now a mere shadow of itself. Ten years of Harper, the influence of Trump, and the bottom feeding Scheer Cons have done this country great damage and it's not going to be easy to heal the wounds. But we still have almost six months before the election and plenty of time to destroy the usurpers....
P.S. I live with a French speaking Quebecer in a bilingual household where both of us sometimes have to struggle to complete a sentence in the other's language. And we both thought that article on Justin's accent was absolute nonsense...
Hi JD..thank you, I'm glad to be back. And while I don't condone violence against any politician, I would like to see Justin Trudeau be a lot more aggressive in the way he treats his Con enemies. His obvious decency is one of the main reasons I support him, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. The schmearmongering Cons have acted like beasts, and they need a dose of their own medicine...
Hi Jackie...as I said before, if anyone is going to be deported from this country it will be the un-Canadian Cons. Hopefully in cattle cars heading for Mar-A-Lago...😼
Hi anon @1:21 PM...I have always considered Kenney to be a ghastly religious fanatic and bully who lives in his closeted parallel universe. He has never had any life but politics, and as a true fanatic he is capable of doing enormous damage to this country. On the other hand the oil pimps couldn't have chosen a worse leader to defend their industry. Trudeau had to measure his words when Notley was in charge but not any longer...
Hi John...I am willing to predict that Kenney sees his new job as just a stepping stone to the job he really wants, Prime Minister of Canada. But the danger is that he could very easily give up that dream for another, father of an independent Alberta. I can't convince many people that Kenney is a real separatist threat, but I'm pretty sure that history will prove me right. As for the yellow vesters, the problem is that some of them are just honest oil workers who have been convinced by demagogues like Kenney that Ottawa is screwing them. While the others are just hate filled fanatics so you couldn't put the in the same building. Or you could but it would be ugly...😉
Hi Steve....Indon't know what "Koas" means, but the U.S. has always gone after oil like a piece of steel goes after a magnet. That''s the real reason for the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and the real reason the U.S. is threatening to invade Venezuela...
what other country has a lot of oil? would the US like an indpendent Alberta dependent upon the good old USA?
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