The day Justin Trudeau won the 2015 election was the day I first began to believe in the possibility of real change.
It was like coming out of the darkness into the light, after the horror of the Harper years.
And although I was not disappointed, I'm now hoping that the horror of the pandemic may give Trudeau a chance to take that real change even further.
For this couldn't be more encouraging.
Inside Trudeau’s Liberal government an age-old debate is alive: how not to waste the opportunity presented by the COVID-19 pandemic — and there is a growing sense that key players believe now is the time to take a more aggressive approach to being progressive.
The thinking goes like this: the pandemic exposed major social and economic inequities when it comes to child care, long-term care for seniors, women’s ability to remain in the workforce when schools are shut, the lack of social safety net backstops for precarious workers, and the disproportionate economic and health impacts of the virus on Black people and other minority communities. And so now is the time, with the cost of long-term borrowing so cheap due to historically low interest rates, to address those inequities for the longer term, sources said.
And this would be amazing.
One said there is an “opportunity for us to think big to think about child care, to think about how we can accelerate the transition to clean energy and how we can fight climate change, how we can help vulnerable people, how we can root out discrimination and level the playing field for working people and on all the progressive ideas that we’ve talked about and made progress on but in a different context. So can we actually present a big vision? I think we can.”
Of course, Cons like Pierre Poilievre are against any bold plans to remake Canada.
Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre doesn’t buy it. He says the government, spooked by the fallout of WE, aims to run a campaign on “this fairy tale that you can just continue to pour free money out of airplanes.”
He just wants more money for the tar sands, and no doubt our scummy mariachi media will be on his side..,
But Trudeau has shown he can stand up to the Cons, and their stooge media.
He's getting some powerful reinforcements.
Unlike other leaders he has the ability to think outside the box.
He must surely know that the time is now.
And that now is his chance to be the greatest prime minister this country has ever known...
14 comments:
Obviously that's why Skippy and the media are trying to damage the Liberals and/or push Trudeau out, before he gets the chance at building Canada back up with a Maple New Deal. The Cons are bitching about Carney being an eco-radical and a "Laurentian elite." The NDP are using that Con catchphrase. It's on Matthew Green's TL. They're mimicking Cons out of populist petulance. PP problems.
Now you'd think the NDP would be energized by this plan. That assumes the NDP are rational actors and not shambolic, shit-flinging cosplay communists just like the Berniecrats. Peter Julian plans to ask Dion to investigate Telford and Silver. A private citizen, who the "party of workers" is trying to get fired from his job. ConBots and DipperBots online are calling them Bonnie and Clyde. Which leads me to believe the NDP apparently wants more sausage makers to go after them the way that latest asshole went after Catherine McKenna. This is the "conscience of parliament"? Where's YOUR fucking recovery plan? Idiots!
I hope Justin Trudeau is able to overcome this maelstrom of hatred and fake news, and that Canadians don't throw away a once-in-forever opportunity because they're pissed about Hillary's Emails. (I also hope he's taking the advice I sent to him, and meeting with lawyers to file defamation suits against Jesse Brown and the Globe & Mail.) I get that he doesn't want a fall election, because there's a pandemic, but if the opposition are stupid enough to force one (the Bloc are said to be tabling a non-confidence motion on September 23rd), I still think it could end up backfiring on them and working in his favor. Personally I hope he baits them into it and gets rid of this minority-government clusterfuck once and for all.
What's clear is that the opposition has nothing to offer besides "Crooked Justin," "corrupt Liberals," "gravy train," "Laurentian cult," and no viable policy alternatives of their own. So they create fake scandals to eat into his support. That 40% in June made them shit themselves in fear, so they lashed out with this. But it was well deserved, and I hope he ultimately gets it back, because Trudeau is the only one who actually gives a fuck about Canada and her people, while they're off grandstanding for the TV and telling lies about innocent people to boost their poll numbers at the Liberals' expense. How much taxpayer money is being wasted on these committees? How much? How much? How much? How much? How much? And they have the nerve to call Trudeau PM Selfie??? What about Paranoid Pierre Polaroid?
As usual Simon, you are RIGHT ON! Your analysis of what is happening politically is exactly what is really happening. So sick of the Con Media and their lies I could spit nails. Keep up the good work. I'll share this with Pierre Poilievre, otherwise known as "Skippy". Not that his supporters will read it. They can't stand FACTS.
Free trade, the NEP, both nation wrenching exercises where the country would obviously win by saying no and yes. This was back before the great manipulations, but still the bad guys won, and got lots of plain brown envelopes.
Wow, you don't just drink the Kool-Aid you inject it.
But between pressure from Jagmeet Singh and members of Trudeau's inner circle what exactly Justin will do in practice.
Hope you are right Simon and that Trudeau has opportunity to make his move. There is a lot to choose from, freedom in the form of basic income, health care,free education (online?), environmentally sustainable businesses. Carney is a good addition for the latter.
Although I am paraphrasing, as Butts once said every once in a while a progressive government gets to make a significant change for the better that becomes the norm that subsequent clowns cannot undo. Like his father,Justin needs to seize the moment, make his mark for the benefit of all Canadians and then move on or not. The opportunity is now, Covid has exposed the weakness in our social net and also much of our economic system is flexible as long as we keep the essential services functioning. Flip a burger for someone else's convenience or design a more environmentally friendly product or service. The choice is yours once there is opportunity in the form of education and a financial backstop.
RT
Restoring progressive values doesn't require low interest rates or massive borrowing. It requires having the guts to tell billionaires that the free ride's over and we're going back to the post-war marginal tax rates that built this country's progressive foundation. Oh, and forget about repatriating that cash stashed in offshore tax havens.
Rather a sweet red Kool-Aid than the NDP's poison Trump orangeade. JT faces pressure to do what? Fulfill Jagmeet's untenable "Santa Claus wish list" after the NDP jumped aboard the Con bandwagon to spew virulent smears against his colleagues and his family? Dude, you've said on this board before you're a "men's rights activist" which is basically a euphemism for incel apologist. You ever think that maybe Justin doesn't want to give Jagmeet the time of day ever again because he refused to rein in Charlie's vile attacks on his poor mom?
And don't give me any of that class-warfare crap that it's OK to drag her through the mud because the Trudeaus aren't flat broke. As a mental health sufferer myself, I am so disgusted with this party and what they have done to a survivor. She said it best herself: she is more than just a rose in any man's lapel.
Digging up dirt on Margaret Trudeau's personal life, and portraying her as a gold-digger who rode on her husband and son's coattails to line her own pockets, is the lowest form of gutter politics, but it's something I'm used to from the Bernie Bros. I fought back those same line of attacks that the brocialists leveled against Hillary Clinton. Women are more than just their last name. After the misogynistic hate spewed against McKenna as of late, the NDP, Jagmeet, and Charlie in particular are in no position to demand a damn thing.
Oh, and speaking of which, saw some NDP surrogates on Twitter tonight with a really lame victim-blaming meme blaming Trudeau for the McKenna ambush because... he didn't do electoral reform. "FPTP produces adversarial politics, therefore misogynistic bile against female cabinet ministers is Trudeau's fault" is a really, really bad take and not exactly something that'll win people over on this issue. Probably drowned it in a bathtub right then and there. I hope this plan and Carney's high-profile involvement wins back the Liberal majority so that the NDP gets shoved to the nosebleed section of the HoC where they belong. Heck, I hope he runs in Carleton just so Charlie has to say goodbye to his sidekick Populist Penis Poilievre.
Shame on the NDP. Nothing but Dirty Politics is what they stand for.
The idea that a Universal Basic Income is an idea whose time has come has been discussed here at Progressive Bloggers, in mainstream media and in various blogs. The inadequacy of unemployment, OAS , childcare, student loans etc. to meet even the minimum needs of Canadian's during this pandemic makes this point painfully obvious.
UBI fits right in with the policies of the NDP and the beliefs of their supporters. Jagmid's decision to punish the Liberals by punishing his own supporters may prove difficult come leadership contest time. Opposing UBI could leave the NDP with a caucus even smaller than the last election did.
The Bloc are supposed to be social democrats and believe in better services and programmes. Blanchet, at first ready to cooperate to fight the covid bite has lately veered off to braindead obstruction. As with the NDP, the Bloc is choosing to punish the Liberals by punishing their own constituents.
If a UBI package is brought forward, it will be a money bill. Will the NDP vote for an election when they won't get any more seats but will waste what little money they have ? Will the Bloc vote for an election, knowing they have nowhere to go but down and such a vote would stab their voters in the back.
Will the reformatories, fresh from a convention where they veer wildly off to the anti-human rights evangelicals vote for an election where their crazies alienate the resposible members of the party.
May you live in interesting times.
Hi Jackie....Don't worry be happy. The Cons, the DipperCons, and the mariachi media are jumping up and down making a lot of noise but it's not going anywhere. Most decent Canadians still support Justin Trudeau, and see the grubbies for who they are. They know how hard Trudeau has worked to lead us through a brutal epidemic, and in the end that's what counts...
Hi Sylvia...The ugly Con media works night and day to try to demoralize us. But they exist in a parallel universe and have lost touch with the feelings of ordinary Canadians. So stay cool, enjoy the summer, for when the next election arrives we will get a great chance to bury the Cons for at least a generation....
Hi Gyor....Oh dear, you accuse me of shooting up Kool-Aid, but you must be shooting up something a lot stronger, like booze, heroin, or fentanyl. Or worse snorting the NDP's fumes. The fact is Trudeau is still at least twice as popular as your Jiggy leader. All he is capable of doing is stealing the ideas of others and attacking the Liberals like the Cons. We haven't started attacking him yet, but we will, and when we do it won't take much to totally destroy him...
Hi Steve...The NEP was a great idea, and free trade is what you need to have when the U.S. is your neighbour. But the future is still a blank slate, and Justin Trudeau is the only leader who can write it....
Hi anon@10:45...Canada is a country where far too many people demand first-class services, but don't like paying for them. So I agree that raising our ridiculously low tax rates is essential, but let's not forget that it's not just billionaires who are greedy, so are many others....
Hi RT...I freely admit I'm an optimist, I believe in a better tomorrow. And if we are to make the moves we need for a better future, we'll never have a better opportunity than right now. This is a big country populated by a lot of little people. But if not now, when?
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