It feels really good at the moment to notice the sudden passivity of right-leaning voices (except for Trump and Alberta premier Danielle Smith, that is) this past week, and even they know why their messages are no longer valid: our national polls are simply making the point that were an election to be called today, the Liberal Party of Canada, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, would probably end up with a caucus of just over 200 souls. Hurts, doesn’t it, especially when for the past five or so years, our federal Conservatives were claiming that Liberals didn’t have any “soul” at all, least of all their leader, Justin Trudeau.
For some, this “turning away” the voices on the right is unnerving. Even “evangelical” Christians praying for war criminals Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu to vanquish Satan’s military hordes in Iran may have finally “gotten the message” that when these two join forces in starting an almost biblically prophesized regime change war, God just might not be listening; after all. Didn’t the Venezuelan baseball team just win the World Classic Baseball Championship, defeating the United States in the final game, thus figuratively bathing Trump in petroleum crude?
Personally, I like how Venezuela’s third baseman Eugenio Suarez expressed his joy: “God is good. We have to glorify, put His name in front of everything.” Canadians, however, have only begun to pray – sort of – in expressing the need for our nation’s politicians to get on with the task of righting our economy. Most of us seem to understand that Trump’s leanings and desire to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize allowed Netanyahu to sucker him into joining Israel in carpet bomb Iran, and now that “over very shortly” war is threatening to expand to include Canadian soldiers being involved, with the added possibility of it ending up becoming an outright nuclear war.
Perhaps these uncomfortable thoughts in combination with recent polling results is what prompted Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to join Carney’s “Team Canada” as a bona fide cheerleader, first by accepting an invitation to appear on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast to make the case for Canadian petroleum and free trade (sans tariffs), then pushing back on Rogan’s caricature of Justin Trudeau being Fidel Castro’s son, and to “knock off that shit” about Canada becoming the United States’ 51st state (Yes, he DID say “shit”).
In doing so, Poilievre showed a rare display of humility, especially when one considers that the only thing “good” that we’ve heard from Conservative parliamentarians and even Poilievre himself was their castigation of Prime Minister Carney for, as the National Post’s Scott Stinson so politely put it, “making the argument in recent days that a Liberal majority acquired via MP defections will tear the country asunder,” thereby making them sound as being nothing more than a party stocked with a caucus of sore losers.
My only concern at the moment is, are the members of that caucus also willing to take the gloves off for a while, and work with Carney as he attempts to redefine our economic agenda without the United States taking up so much of the paperwork. Take, for instance, the rather gloomy manner in which our local Member of Parliament, Randy Hoback, reports the results posted by Statistics Canada as to our current national job situation in his electronic version of the “Hoback Herald”:
• We’ve seen “a drop in over 84,000 full-time jobs in February”
• There has been “a drop of almost 50,000 youth jobs” (over 14% unemployed)
• We have “the only shrinking economy in the G7”
• “22.8% are trapped in long-term unemployment”, and
• We’re witnessing the “cratering of private sector employment”
There’s no denying that these economic figures don’t have us viewing our future with any degree of optimism. Hoback in turn maintains that “Canadians aren’t working because Carney’s policies aren’t working,” and maintains that while Conservatives may have “released a detailed jobs plan last fall to unleash the economy, fix immigration, fix job training and build homes where the jobs are, Liberals still have no plan to fix the damage their policies are causing.”
Sorry, my friend, but here’s where I get off the rhetorical bus, because whereas the “facts” as presented by Statistics Canada are accurate and relevant, the conclusions are on some shaky ground. The most obvious one lacking an explanation for its occurrence is the issue of Canada being “the only shrinking economy in the G7.” First of all, that same Report also notes that “other G7 members are experiencing significant economic stagnation,” and are bordering economic levels that would indicate such contraction,” including Germany, which is now in its THIRD year of recession and Japan, where economic growth began to falter as early as 2023, and continues even today, resulting in it now being only the FOURTH largest economy in the world.
I fully realize that Mr. Hoback’s “take” is only a rewrite of a similar statement put out by Mr. Poilievre, but this economic “stagnation” has only borne fruit as a result of weakening exports created by President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and trying to relocate industries that once abandoned sole placement in the United States back into the fold (e.g.: GMC, which has just eliminated some 500 jobs in Oshawa, Ont., and has been on a plant production closing schedule that started in 2018, in the middle of Trump’s FIRST term in office).
Yes, I “get it”: it’s the “job” of political parties to tout their own solutions, but WHY is it that the ONLY way that our conservative-thinking parties ALWAYS fail to provide potential voters with the possible reasons as to why such conditions exist, and then direct their solutions towards “fixing” what is causing the problem, and by being HONEST in keeping to that approach then replace the governments in power with individuals actually knowing what the goals are in attaining progress in meeting the goals of their party, WITHOUT the snide personal attacks on an individual who – theoretically at least – hasn’t the power to shape legislation as does an American President.
Mr. Hoback, though, does open up some topics that require further investigation and need for elaboration, especially when addressing our housing and food concerns, and he’s probably not going to like how I can incorporate his concerns respecting a lack of progress onto his philosophical companions down at the Marble Palace in Regina.
He might just end up regretting his rephrasing of Mr. Poilievre’s post and putting such “spin” on the Statistics Canada report, as there’s a lot of “blame” to go around, including at our City Council level, all of which I will try to fit into next week’s column.
Ken MacDougal is a retired teacher and former election candidate for the federal NDP. His column appears on Saturday.
