Some people claim that if you’ve “seen one government, you’ve seen them all,” and that life pretty much continues on the same way, regardless of who is in power. For those individuals, I show them a photograph I discovered about twenty years ago. The photo is of a large, hilly region. On the left side is a lush forest that covers the entire landscape. The right side of the photo has no trees, nor even any vegetation. The land is baked hard, and no topsoil is apparent. The two landscapes are separated by a straight line running to the horizon. This straight line is actually the border between the nations of the Dominican Republic (on the left) and Haiti (on the right). The reason for the dramatic difference in the two landscapes is because of the governments of the two respective nations. The Dominican Republic has enjoyed decades of effective government, while Haiti has suffered decades of incompetent and criminal leadership. While forests were well managed by the Dominican government, Haiti’s forests were harvested for the maximum possible gain in the shortest period of time. Governments can make huge impacts on a nation, whether for the better, or for the worse.
While accepting that government can make huge impacts, I’ve tried to view Canada’s federal government with an unbiased eye. However, it is now clear to me that Canada is being led by an arrogant and ignorant individual who has none of the qualities or skills required to run a government. How else can we explain a prime minister who recently commented we needed to “carefully manage how to phase out Alberta’s oilsands industry?” This is an industry that generates hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs, pours billions into provincial and federal coffers, an industry that has (and is) working very hard to reduce emissions and environmental damage. Our prime minister is an idiot. But, since he wants to shut down industries, let him start with Ontario’s auto industry or Quebec’s electrical production industry.
Trudeau has completely misread Canadians. Canadians are not fossil fuel supporters, and will accept any reasonable solution that reduces greenhouse gas emissions. However, they are not being given reasonable solutions. Instead, they are offered solutions that produce small and unreliable supplies of energy, solutions that are so ridiculously expensive as to be prohibitive, and solutions that ignore the reality of the Canadian climate. Finally, after being told to accept expensive and unreliable energy options, Canadians are also informed that, despite their sacrifices, these changes will not actually solve the problem. Canadians are smart enough to realize Trudeau’s program is an expensive and pointless scheme.
In most political parties, when senior leadership realizes their leader is a disaster, they take steps to remove the clown from power, before he destroys himself and the rest of the party. Whether the liberals have this fortitude remains to be seen. If not, well, Canada is a strong country, so one can only hope that our nation manages to survive the joke we call Justin Trudeau until the next election, when we can rid ourselves of this fool, forever.
Brian McLeod is a St. Albert resident.
