According to the Liberal Party of Ontario, Patrick Brown has been channeling his inner Donald Trump lately by adopting the U.S. President's dirty style of politics.  (No, clean politics isn't an oxymoron, as Justin "Sunny Ways" Trudeau proves everyday with his smiles and socks.)  I mean, all this time, all the signs have been lurking underneath a repressed Brown, subdued by his handlers as they try to present a subtler version of Trump's populism.

The first tell-tale sign of a Trumpster is blatant, bald-faced disregard for the truth.  The Toronto Stars intrepid Washington correspondent Daniel Dale has become the official fact-checker of Donald Trump.  He's meticulously documented every equivocation, fib, and lie coming out of the big mouth of the bloviator-in-chief over the past two years.  There have been hundreds upon hundreds of untruths.  Unfortunately there isn't a reporter dedicated to debunking all of Brown's falsehoods, but thankfully Queen's Park press gallery members are privy to LPO press release emails from the Liberal aides fact-checking Brown's public statements.  "Patrick Brown's Double Speak on Abortion Rights", "Back to the Future — 2012 Edition — Facts Still Matter in Ontario", "Ventriloquism in Vaughn — Facts Still Matter in Ontario", "Plowing Through the Facts — Facts Still Matter in Ontario", and "Doesn't Matter Where, He Just Doesn't Care — Facts Still Matter in Ontario" are just a sampling of some of the press release emails the LPO has tirelessly provided journalists since the summer.  If you were beginning to notice a theme, you'd be right.  The Liberals have been so kind as to dedicate an entire website — http://www.factsstillmatter.ca/ â€” to push back on Brown's sophistry with nothing but pure, unadulterated, facts deduced from nothing but the Socratic method.

Brown, breaking away from the hallowed tradition of Ontario politicians telling nothing but the God-honest truth, speaks only falsehoods according to the OLP.  Brown's latest whopper, in a supposedly Trumpesque move, was to slander the honourable and irreproachable Premier Kathleen Wynne when he falsely claimed she was standing trial.  Never mind that two ongoing corruption trials involve four top Liberal aides, including Wynne's former chief of staff, the fact of the matter is that the premier has done nothing wrong herself, and she voluntarily agreed to testify as a witness.  It all parallels Trump back in 2016, when he slandered an innocent Hillary Clinton by casting aspersions on her deft handling of Benghazi and its subsequent hearings or her unfortunate but honest mistake of her handling of classified emails, which former FBI Director James Comey — an objective judge if there ever was one — exonerated her for, twice.  In due course, you'll see, Wynne's Liberal aides will be cleared of any wrongdoing as well, absolving the party.

The second unmistakably Trumpian trait Brown is starting to embody is the enjoyment of nasty attacks.  The Liberals have sounded the Trump alarm because of "disgraceful" and "personal attacks" Brown and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario have used in their most recent television ad aimed at Wynne.  The ad shows selective headlines and excerpts from the media that mention distance memories like the gas plant scandal, and at the bottom of the screen, in ALL CAPS, it reads "THE ONTARIO LIBERAL PARTY IS POLITICALLY CORRUPT", and there is sinister background music and clinking of jail cell doors closing.  It all gives the totally false impression that the Liberals through nepotism and self-interest have sold out Ontarians, something completely outrageous to even suggest.  On top of this, Brown, like his fellow teetotaller down South, is starting to lash out wildly on Twitter.  Yesterday Brown had the impertinence to tweet that Wynne was stonewalling over chemical spills in Sarnia.  Or another reckless tweet where he mocked Wynne for doing her civic duty in testifying in Sudbury.  It's only a matter time until Nice Patrick fully transforms into rolled-up-sleeves-and-loosened-tie, monstrous Mr. Brown, bellowing "Lyin' Wynne" and "Crooked Kathleen."  Remain vigilant.

Alas, there is one area where Brown couldn't be any more absurdly different than Trump than the above satirical comparisons made above, and it's why the rest of Trump's traits uncharacteristic of Brown might stick on the Conservative leader.  Brown doesn't have the chutzpah or charisma that reality TV showman Trump does, he spent most of his political career on the back bench.  Whatever your opinion of Trump, he is a master at branding by manipulating the base impulses of the press.  Brown on the other hand, is still unknown to about half of Ontarians who don't even know who he is.  All it takes is a gaffe here and a slip-up there during election season and Brown will be portrayed by the LPO and media as the Big Bad Wolf, and seen through the just-opened eyes of sensitive leftist voters, which make up so much of the Ontario electorate, as ghastly.  That, or, God willing, Ontarians will see through this pathetic Hail Mary attempt by a Liberal party desperate to cling to power.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

Trudeau took a break from starring in his new role as Robin Hood to once again reprise his role as chivalrous Lancelot.  It's a hoaky act we all know well by now.  On a stage in New York for the U.N.'s We Day a couple weeks ago, the New York Times gushed over how our "lovable" PM kept "preaching" feminism, giving an "impassioned" speech on the subject dear to his heart.  But looking at Trudeau's first couple years in office, is Trudeau really living up to his soaring rhetoric about championing women?

In Trudeau's quest to elevate women he has unquestioningly done some worthy deeds.  Reallocating Canada's nearly $5 billion international assistance budget so that 95 per cent goes towards empowering women and girls in the developing world by 2022 was certainly honourable and worth mentioning.  It makes a lot of sense because helping women and girls attain equality has proven to be the best way to improve the quality of life for all in society.

Yet, the Trudeau's Liberals' erasure of the "barbaric cultural practices" section in their first draft of the new Canadian citizenship study guide, unveiled a few months ago, runs counter to the goal of empowering women and girls of these regions who emigrate to Canada.  Many new Canadian immigrants come from these developing countries where female genital mutilation (FGM), beating of women, honour killings and other wholly misogynistic and deplorable practices are tragically still legal and/or common.  The Liberals redirecting of Canada's foreign funding towards women's rights abroad is acknowledgement by Trudeau's government of the oppression these women face in these regions.  So why, then, would feminist Trudeau not want to ensure new Canadians from these regions are informed at the outset of entering our country that these misogynist practices will not be tolerated here?

It's not like these abhorrent — to use Trudeau's government's own word to describe FGM — behaviours aren't already happening to women and girls in immigrant communities in Canada.  Back in July, Global News reported border officers have been warned to be on the lookout for genital mutilation practitioners traveling to Canada with the intention of committing the crime here.  The Toronto Star has been doing an ongoing investigation into Canadian girls being subjected to the outlawed procedure in Canada or overseas.  So far the government has laid out no real response or solution to this problem, instead deciding to keep new arrivals in the dark about this and other barbaric practices that are illegal in this country.

As the pro-abortion zealots in Trudeau's government threw a tantrum over pro-life Conservative MP Rachael Harder being nominated to head the status of women committee (which isn't even looking at abortion), unborn girls in this country continue to be aborted because of their sex.  Trudeau made it clear he is "resolutely pro-choice" when he dogmatically announced in 2014 that all Liberal candidates must be pro-choice.  This rigid pro-abortion stance means Trudeau will ignore the abhorrent practice of sex-selective abortions currently occurring in Canada and addressed in other Western nations.  Disturbing media reports be damned.  The CBC back in 2012 aired an undercover investigation exposing private ultrasound clinics that were offering to identify the fetus's gender in the early stages of pregnancy.  Last year another study came out showing thousands of more boys were born compared to girls in a Canadian immigrant community, suggesting sex-selective abortion contributed to the skewed ratio.  Shouldn't feminist Trudeau be making sure this odious practice of valuing and picking unborn boys over unborn girls is banned in Canada?

To be fair, the Conservatives cowardly avoided addressing the problem when they had the opportunity to do so, but Trudeau proclaims everywhere he goes that he's a feminist, so shouldn't he be held to an accordingly higher standard?

Although the gender-balanced cabinet was argued by some as a sexist hiring practice and tokenism (Trudeau paying some women ministers less at first didn't help) straying further away from meritocracy, the overall effect of having half the cabinet made up of women does send a powerful message to women and girls interested in joining politics.  However, Trudeau has extended "feminist" affirmative action to the last budget to help address things like the mythic wage gap (Men on average work longer hours and are more willing to do dangerous work, two factors of many contributing in a higher average income for men, as well as the lionshare of workplace fatalities).  Shortly after that, feminist Trudeau decreed universities give more Canada Research Chair Program grants to women, despite there being far less women in STEM fields and doctoral studies out of personal career choices.  Trudeau also ignored the imbalance in gender representation where women are overrepresented, like good-paying public sector jobs and all other professions when looking at the newest generation in the workforce.  The irony is only compounded by Trudeau paying his male diplomats with less experience more than seasoned female colleagues.

Instead of simply ensuring a level playing field, Trudeau's third-wave feminist impulse has led him to tip the scales in favour of women based simply on their gender.  Meanwhile, Trudeau has stayed mum on real misogynist-based and oppressive problems some Canadian women face, like FGM, physical abuse, and sex-selective abortions.

Women don't need a patronizing and pandering Trudeau being their white knight in lecturing men about the following: "Don't interrupt women and notice every time women get interrupted in conversations."  Who knew women were such helpless pushovers?

Then there are many Canadian women and girls in immigrant communities actually vulnerable to very real patriarchal oppression.  Where is Lancelot Trudeau for these women and girls in actual distress?

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

It took NDP leader-elect Jagmeet Singh's decisive first-round KO of three seasoned opponents for the realization to dawn upon the Canadian political class that Justin Trudeau is now the old, white guy in the room.

But then again, nothing about Trudeau was ever fresh or new.  He simply told us he represented "real change", and Canadians chose to believe him.  So starved for nice-looking things are they, apparently, that they took the first available option and have stubbornly clung to him ever since, flaws be damned.

Never mind that Trudeau has consistently played up his nostalgic appeal for Canadians who still have fond memories of his father, and that he's been as quick to remind Canadians and the world media that "Canada Is Back" now that he's in charge, almost as much as he and his team remind us that it is the Current Year.  Not content with rethinking elements as basic as space and time, our Prime Minister now wishes to be both a thing and its opposite, hopeful as always that the voters will find some way to not notice.

Well, hopefully now that there is another federal leader who can match Trudeau in the style-over-substance department, Canadians will start to realize that our multitude-containing Prime Minister is at odds with himself in a few other domains most notably, how First Nations continue to suffer under his rule despite his noble rhetoric at the UN, or how his professed feminism doesn't extend to forcing female Conservative MPs to accept committee chair jobs they don't want.

Or maybe we could let the scales fall from our eyes entirely and realize that the Liberals not the Conservatives have always been the party of the status quo.

If you doubt this assertion, consider how many times it has been said that the Conservatives are out of touch with mainstream Canadian opinion.  How many times have Conservatives been accused of having hidden agendas, polarizing the discourse, being divisive.  The labels stick to the CPC in a way they never could to the Liberals.

So now that we are finally, slowly, becoming aware of the manifold contradictions of Justin Trudeau, perhaps we can confront one more: If the Conservative Party are the ones pushing a scary agenda, then they cannot also be the ones pushing for things to stay the same.

Since the unavoidable implication of the recent news coverage of Jagmeet Singh's refusal to unequivocally condemn the Air India bombing and his professed admiration of Fidel Castro is that he, too, will take the NDP in a dangerously radical direction, the lot of defending Canada from threats to of the harmonious consensus would inevitably have to fall on the Liberals.

But it isn't just by process of elimination that the Liberals become the party of the status quo.  Indeed, even when the Liberals appear to be doing something controversial or groundbreaking, it is always backed up by carefully focus grouped, politically neutral language meant to shush their opponents or blunt criticism.

Those who are concerned about the government's recent stabs at tax reform must explain why they oppose "tax fairness".  Alternately, the Liberals invoke the Charter and Omar's Khadr's Rights guaranteed thereby to challenge critics who raise their eyebrows at the size of his $10.5 million compensation package.

And if an issue does become too politically charged or divisive such as the Energy East pipeline the Liberals will simply twiddle their thumbs as the National Energy Board drags things out with reviews and red tape until the clock runs out.

One wonders why a party whose organizing principle seems to be "take the path of least resistance" would ever be mistaken for change agents.  It also begs the question of why voters assumed things would be different in the first place.

Unless, of course, the "real change" they wanted was a reversion back to the status quo…..

Written by Josh Lieblein

Jagmeet Singh's appointment as Canada's first-ever nonwhite, non-Christian prime ministerial candidate provoked almost instantaneous anxiety over what rules of propriety should govern conversation about him.  On social media, there was much shaming of a CBC headline referring to him as a "Sikh lawyer" (was Justin Trudeau ever described as a "Catholic teacher" some sneered), while others took umbrage at a Margaret Wente column that used the adjective "exotic."  As Mr. Singh experiences the hike in attention (and criticism) that comes with being a national party leader, expect the language policing and vicarious offense-taking to increase.

Political correctness has made a dramatic resurgence in recent years, and is now one of the defining issues shaping our partisan debate.  This presents obvious challenges for the Canadian left, who must struggle to remain literate in ever-changing PC fashion to prove their mettle as defenders of the victimized, but it's no cakewalk for the right either, who must find a palatable style of resistance to fads that frequently manifest as a crusade against freedom.

Many in the Tory war room would just as well prefer not.  Conventional wisdom has long declared that Conservatives are unelectable when political debate departs from two narrow topics — the economy and Liberal scandals — with divisive "social issues" seen as the most poisonous distraction of all.  Recent high-profile atonements, such as removing support for the traditional definition of marriage from the Conservative party platform, getting Rona Ambrose to march in the Toronto Pride parade, the deification of Jason Kenney as the master of "ethnic outreach," and Andrew Scheer's promise (now basically an ex officio demand of holding the CPC leadership) to not "re-open" the abortion debate represent explicit efforts to bury traditional stereotypes of the party as in hock to reactionary hicks.

Yet social issues — which is to say, issues that force politicians to make moral judgements about some cultural trend — clearly aren't going away, partially because social division isn't, partially because parties of the left understand stoking social anxiety to be a useful tool for discombobulating their anxious opponents on the right.

The Liberals, having successfully cowed both the Conservative leadership and their own caucus into pro-abortion submission, moved to quell the last remaining holdouts of parliamentary opposition last week, when Liberal MPs on the House Status of Women Committee flamboyantly refused to serve under the chairmanship of Tory MP Rachael Harder, who is pro-life.  It was an explicit effort to destroy the delicate compromise Andrew Scheer had tried to build — wherein the pro-life faction of his party is given meaningless sinecures in exchange for zero influence — by transforming the mere existence of any pro-life politicians anywhere into a monstrous offense against women.

A similar campaign is being simultaneously waged against Conservative senator Lynn Beyak, who, despite having been stripped of all her committee positions, continues to share heretical opinions on aboriginal issues, including that residential schools were not uniformly evil, and that the disillusion of Indian reserves  would improve Canadian society.  As with abortion, the Liberals seek to make expressing nuance of any sort on the First Nations file an unambiguous sin deserving maximum reprimand, meaning even a powerless non-entity like Beyak must be made a national enemy simply by virtue of existing.

Then there's old Gerry Ritz, who passively used the nickname "Climate Barbie" in a tweet referencing Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.  The Minister's Liberal colleagues quickly branded this sexist beyond words, though their ability to call for his head was somewhat handicapped by the fact that he'd already resigned a few weeks prior.

Such theatrical episodes will strike many Canadians as silly and hysterical, yet they accurately represent the shape and form of "social issues" today, which have moved beyond substantial matters like marriage and abortion, and towards policing ever-narrowing boundaries of permissible opinion.  By exaggerating the consequence of mildly contrary thoughts or slightly distasteful comments, the left embraces a social agenda whose main consequence is to silence and stifle honest talk about important issues.

Conservative voters expect their party to mount a resistance to all this.  If there's an undeniable reserve of energy on the right these days, it's against the ever-widening net of PC authoritarianism.  Yet traditional Tory fears of being branded the party of bigots remains a powerful force on the other end.

Reflecting his status as a true party centrist, Andrew Scheer's present course appears to be a sort of middle of-the-road, tolerate-but-not-support strategy, wherein he refuses to endorse the un-PC opinions of caucus members like Harder, Beyak or Ritz, but refuses to purge them from the party altogether — as is easy to imagine many of his leadership opponents doing.

Half efforts like these are often unsustainable, since they tend to imply a weakness of conviction, which opponents can easily exploit.  If 2019 is an election in which Singh and Trudeau fall over each other in an arms race of offense and outrage — about women, about aboriginals, about the LGBT rainbow, etc. — then a timid Tory leader will find himself outshouted by the left and uninspiring to the right.  If Scheer can find an authentic, consistent, contrary tone, however, a voice of opposition to the obvious excesses of modern PC culture that's forceful, principled, and articulate then we'll have an authentic race of ideas appropriate for this moment.

Photo Credit: CBC News

Written by J.J. McCullough