I'll confess to being a little surprised at the backlash Prime Minister Trudeau received following his splashy cover story in last week's Rolling Stone.  In addition to an editorial in the Washington Post by yours truly, there were at least a half-dozen critical takes published in major Canadian outlets, sniping sarcastic shots at the Rolling Stone piece and the submission-before-power attitude it embodied.  What Trudeau's handlers no doubt hoped would herald a change of narrative after weeks of Omar Khadr bludgeoning wound up being, at best, net neutral.

Conservatives like me sometimes take for granted the degree to which the public and media uncritically embrace the standard line on Trudeau, promoted by his party and the foreign press — that he's the coolest, hippest dude who ever lived, a towering figure of enlightened thought standing athwart a wicked world, etc. Yet we're not all complete sheep in this country; plenty can smell a manipulative PR strategy when it's so consistently shoved up their nostrils.

What's interesting, however, is how much of the everyone-loves-Trudeau pushback comes from the left these days.  That the right would be nauseated by stories of socks and selfies is dog-bites-man — that the progressives would be troubled signals a more meaningful political development.

Some of it's sheer left-wing contrarianism to be sure, particularly from the urban hipster left who will always enjoy hating whatever's popular — especially something as drearily bourgeois as the country's leader.  Yet a lot of it's ideological too.  As much as the right (and Rolling Stone) likes to portray the prime minister as the unchallenged embodiment of Canadian liberalism, he does have vulnerabilities in the eyes of the movement he purportedly leads.  Many of these critiques are neither fair nor logical, but… well, welcome to the modern left.

Take Trudeau's vaguely uncharitable reference in the Rolling Stone piece to his one-time boxing partner, the aboriginal senator Patrick Brazeau.  Calling Brazeau a "good foil" has been taken as proof by some indigenous activists that the prime minister is, quote, "super-racist."  Trudeau has since expressed "regret" for using language that "doesn't contribute to the positive spirit of reconciliation that I'd like to think I know my government stands for," an absurd response to an offence so slight, yet also a tacit acknowledgment that his political future is at least partially dependent on the goodwill of people inclined to find racism wherever they look.  (I'm unclear if Trudeau apologized to Black Lives Matter after the co-founder of the Toronto group called him a "white supremacist terrorist.")

A similar note was sounded by Jen Gerson, also in the Washington Post, who accused Trudeau of mishandling that big grand inquiry into the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), in what has become another standard talking point of Trudeau's critics on the left.

That the MMIW thing is falling off the rails is no real fault of Trudeau, except to the degree he agreed to convene the preposterous thing in the first place.  We already know why aboriginal women are more likely to go missing and be murdered — they disproportionately come from the sort of troubled communities and families that produce missing and murdered people of all races.  The inquiry doesn't exist to perform criminology, however, but rather produce satisfaction in the Canadian aboriginal community at large that every historic sin and present dysfunction of native life has been addressed in some comprehensive way.  Trudeau obviously cannot deliver this with an inquiry, or anything else for that matter, but a faction of his electorate expects him to.

The environment presents another impossible front.  As Kyle Smith noted in National Review, Trudeau would have trouble winning a Democratic primary at the moment given he doesn't oppose all oil development in all circumstances at a time when many progressives are demanding precisely that.  Charlie Smith in the Georgia Straight declared the Rolling Stone piece had done "the world a disservice" by failing to note that Trudeau's government supports no fewer than (gasp) three different pipeline projects!  Smith affectionately quotes an earlier far-left jeremiad in the Guardian that went even further, dubbing Trudeau "a disaster for the planet."

Canada produces about 2% of the world's CO2 emissions, which will surely go down during Trudeau's prime ministership (as they did, it should be noted, under Stephen Harper) and the country is hardly some anything-goes sheikdom when it comes to harvesting and shipping crude.  Any Canadian energy project is already subject to numerous layers of political, bureaucratic, scientific, aboriginal, and judicial oversight, and Trudeau has pledged to strengthen them all in the name of protecting Mother Earth.  Yet until the PM honours his vow to "phase out" the oil sands (and presumably happily deliver the ensuing economic destruction), he'll remain a sellout to some.

Prime Minister Harper was never particularly vulnerable to right wing criticism for a number of reasons, a large one being that conservatives in this country have relatively low expectations for their leaders beyond keeping the other guys out.  The Canadian left is far bossier towards its politicians, with utopian promises explicitly demanded.

Not all progressive voters will hold Trudeau to the standards of perfection his public brand invites.  For them, his lofty aspirations are good enough.  Yet as left-wing partisans across the globe become more sharply ideological, it's clear there exists an increasingly vocal constituency of Canadians who feel need to feel alienated from a politician the foreign press constantly claims to set the gold standard of progressive excellence.

It's why I continue to be fascinated by the rise of the NDP's Jagmeet Singh, a man seemingly on track to offer himself up in 2019 as a sort of Trudeau 2.0 to scorned progressive voters.  Trudeau had best start working on his rebuttal.

Written by J.J. McCullough

Another day, another superficial profile of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the transparently false Messiah of modern progressivism.  Another shrieking backlash from the Canadian left and right.  Another well intentioned but ultimately doomed attempt to show that there's more to Canada than platitudinous nonsense about our "live-and-let-live-ethos".

Ho-freaking-hum.

Those of us who aren't too thrilled about this pinkwashed version of Canada substituting for the real thing in the international media can agonize over cringeworthy lines about Trudeau's socks or the "Royal Canadian Mountain Police" all they please.  They're not getting to the root of why this version of Canada is what the PMO is pushing on unsuspecting and frankly clueless foreign journos.

The truth is, as much as some of us are complaining about this puffery, it's a safe bet.

Just like how you won't find any proud Canadian Nickelback fans even though they must exist there is a barely hidden subset of Canadians who want a false, clean and shiny Canada that we can show off to the neighbours even though they know it to be an utter fraud.

They don't want to talk about problems.  They don't like it when opposition politicians talk about problems.

No deficit talk.  No talk about systematic racism.  No troubling reminders about our past sins or about how much more we have left to do.  The deeper we sink into the depths, the more desire there is to imagine ourselves as a progressive utopia, and the greater the national satisfaction when this mirage fools someone.

Do not reveal our shame, the Prime Minister says as he alternately cozies up to Trump and subverts him by meeting with state governors.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  Take the path of least resistance.

A million convenient evasions keep this illusion alive.

One of Kathleen Wynne's MPP's tweets that a dead man was murdered by a police officer before a verdict has been rendered, and she keeps her job by blaming a possibly fictional, possibly real staffer.

Christy Clark tries to stage yet another of her famous comebacks.  She pledges to fight, then backs down.  Those who know her are shocked.  Those who really call the shots in the province of BC are less so.

A man takes a matter of some broken steps in need of repair into his own hands and fixes them himself.  The Mayor of Toronto is not pleased and says so.  The steps are dismantled by city employees and everyone pretends it never happened.

Saudi Arabia is using weapons sold to them by Canada against its own citizens!  Whose fault is it?  The Saudis, of course!  Trudeau had the best of intentions and only wanted to protect Canadian jobs in Southwestern Ontario.  Cut him some slack, huh?

And in each case, the people choose to believe what they are told, against the sight of their own eyes.

Doubtless those on the left who try to talk up their own outrages, with even less success, feel the same frustration at trying to get anyone to take action, much less recognize the existence of a problem any problem.

But the left, who are necessarily resistant to the very concept of personal responsibility and will forever be committed to making the case for humanity's essential goodness, prefer to blame shapeless entities like capitalism, the patriarchy and systemic racism for what ails the world.

They cannot see that these exalted academic concepts are just more sophisticated evasions.  If all are part of the system, then none can be responsible, and nothing has to change.  All that is then possible is the virtue signal, the slacktivism, the violence of the ultimately meaningless and hollow gesture, which is precisely what Trudeau the cardboard cutout saviour embodies.

Do not ask why we voted for this man.  The answer is obvious.  He personally asks no sacrifice from the voters though his government exacts heavy penalty.  He smiles and is easy on the eyes and only lays blame at the feet of those who have condemned themselves to be the scapegoat for all that is wrong with the country the hated Opposition.  He recognizes that Canadians don't want to be bothered with the fine details and likely wouldn't understand them if they were.  Just keep it light and dumb and passive-aggressive!  That's how we like it up in Canada.

And until we, as a nation, stop evading the truth and look it straight in its vacant blue eyes, nothing will change.

Photo Credit: Rolling Stone

Written by Josh Lieblein

How did Wynne make a miraculous poll vaulting jump in support in the latest poll released by Innovative Research Group (IRG)?  Of course this should be put in context, which so many journalists fail to do in reporting polls.  IRG is an unreliable pollster if its spectacular failure in predicting the B.C. Liberals having the edge (Christy Clark just resigned Friday) in the province's recent election is any indicator.  According to IRG, Wynne's OLP have sprung from a record low of 12 per cent support in March up to 35 per cent in July, a jump of 22 per cent.  I'll wait for more polls before I actually believe Wynne has sprung from the dead, doubling her popularity in a few months' time, but if there is even a grain of truth to this most recent poll, Wynne's Liberals seem to be recuperating from flatlining.

Apparently Wynne's bag of goodies (read voter bribes) seem to be working, but what is more likely to have already swayed public support is the bottom line of today.  In June, the 17 per cent hydro rate reduction took effect.  Perhaps this appeased some angry Ontarians.  The Wynne government's propaganda campaign trumpeting the reduction could only have helped.

The Ontario Liberal Party was patted on the back for bringing in campaign finance reform late last year, passing the Election Finances Act.  The Act was supposed to end cash-for-access events, which Wynne partook in regularly in her first few years in office, as well as end corporate and union contributions to parties and impose restrictions on third-party advertisers.  Although the move looked like the Liberals were giving up a large advantage in their ability to out fundraise their opponents, the new legislation also put taxpayers on the hook for giving each party $2.71 per vote received in the last election.  This translated to the Liberals receiving $5.06 million, the Conservatives, NDP and Green getting $4.09 million, $3.1 million and $630,000 respectively.  This means the Liberals still received just under $1 million more in taxpayer funding to their party from the government (themselves) than the next closest rival, and will receive the same advantage next year.

On top of this, wily Premier Kathleen Wynne loosened the government advertising rules the previous year.  This is why Wynne's "Fair Hydro Plan" ads have been inundating Ontarians the last several months, despite the chagrin it has caused the hands-tied auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, who, according to the National Post, said the changes "reduced her office to a rubber stamp."

The hyper-partisan ads, which I've already mocked, say "we've heard you" and falsely advertise that Ontarian ratepayers are getting an average of an additional 25 per cent off their hydro, instead of the actual 17 per cent reduction being given (Wynne's government includes, fraudulently, the 8 per cent provincial HST taken off bills at the beginning of the year).  The ads make no mention of the $21 billion burned up in additional interest payments, or that taxpayers will have to pay more in the next couple years to help offset the cost to the province.  Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault said Wynne's government "spent under $1 million on both the radio ads and the social media ads" back in March.  Since then, the ads have been ubiquitous, on television, radio, print and social media.  I suspect millions have been spent since Thibeault's low estimate, and I intend to find out just how much of taxpayers money they've burned to brainwash them into thinking they're doing a good job with taxpayers' money.

Either way, the OLP is getting plenty of free government advertising to repair its image because of how it loosened the rules.  I'll be looking into just how they buggered with government advertising legislation in 2015, how much they're spending on this uninformative PR ad blitz and whether or not this latest (likely push) poll reveals it's actually working.  Stay tuned.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

Because I've been calling Patrick Brown out for months, some readers may have gotten the idea that I don't want him to win.

Well, let me clarify nothing would please me more than Patrick Brown becoming Premier of this province.

Not because I'd be thrilled to have him as the province's First Minister, mind you, but because it would finally prove a few things that many know to be true but at least for now have yet to be confirmed as verifiable facts.

Conservative principles are a joke

Is anyone going to claim that Patrick Brown is in the same universe as a conservative principle?  I mean, supporting Patrick Brown unironically basically marks you as a barking partisan, but not even Patrick's most ardent supporter is going to call him principled.

There was always cause to suspect that these principles were mere lip service paid to the idea that there was some difference between the parties.  If Brown wins while other conservative leaders tried and failed, expect fewer and fewer leadership contestants and elected officials to bother pretending.

This also creates a dilemma for a group of Principled Conservatives like Conservative Futures, who you might expect to speak out against Patrick Brown, but I guess despite being super principled they can let it go just this one time because we hate Kathleen Wynne that much, right?  Actually no.  No, that's not how it works at all.  That's the textbook definition of partisanship over principle.

The Conservative base enjoys being treated like cattle

I alluded to this in my last rant on Patrick Brown's behaviour.  As much as the Brown loyalists want to spin otherwise and as much as they want to talk about "shooting outwards, not inwards", the PCPO is in the state it is in because of the party bosses' actions.  The party does something stupid, the base gets angry, and then the party tells them to shut up because "they're helping Wynne".

It was the party, not the base, who pulled stunts at nomination meetings across the province.  It was the party, not the base, who called for "revenue neutral carbon pricing."  It was the party, not the base, who played footsie with the anti sex ed crowd and then claimed that it was merely a one night stand.

But somehow we have forgotten all of this.  We have people on Facebook at this precise moment admitting that Brown is a dud and that the process was likely abused, but the most important thing is that Wynne goes and that somehow, after the change in government they will hold Brown's feet to the fire?  Sure, let us all know how that works out.

Liberals rule this country

"Oh, what's the big deal if some nominations got screwed up!  This happens in every party!"

"So what if Patrick supports a carbon tax Trudeau will make it law in 2018 anyway!"

"It'd be great if we could run a real conservative campaign, but Ontario is far too left for that!"

These and other lame excuses currently being made excusing the PC Party of Ontario indicate that plenty of PC supporters have admitted that fighting the Liberals is far too hard.  And after a decade-plus of Harper mostly banging his head against a wall and constant failed PC Party campaigns from coast to coast to coast, that's not a position without merit.

But for Patrick Brown to actually win while tacitly endorsing all of the above means that creating a viable political alternative to the Liberals is not a goal that anyone, conservatives least of all, really want to accomplish.  We are fine with being a democracy in name only, a one Party state backstopped by a class of untouchables.

The fact that Patrick Brown a man who could stand beside Emmanuel Macron or Justin Trudeau and not seem entirely out of place is a viable conservative leader in this day and age and in this country really does suggest that there is something special about Canada that makes it a globalist paradise.  Or it may suggest that Canadians could fight back, but we have simply allowed the Liberals to rule over us.

Either way, with Patrick Brown at the helm, the blame can no longer be laid at the feet of the Liberals.  We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Photo Credit: You Tube

Written by Josh Lieblein