After a decade spinning in a maelstrom, we’re headed straight into a hurricane.

The Trudeau Liberals’ hegemonic hold on Canada’s political, cultural and economic life is now officially and formally winding down. Parliament has been prorogued until March 24, although it isn’t certain that Canada will have a new Parliament with a new prime minister even by June, when Canada is supposed to be hosting the G7, by which time the Liberals are expected to have a new leader too.

Who knows. We’ll get there. Justin Trudeau will be gone, but this is what you should bear in mind as Canada careens and lists and tumbles out of this mess.

The world’s first “postnational state” that Trudeau inaugurated in 2015, with the able assistance of Dominic Barton’s McKinsey & Company and all the resources the Canada-China Business Council threw at the project, was never intended to be some four-year thing to be evaluated by voters in the ordinary course of events.

It was built to be permanent. Its undoing will require one hell of an effort, and in the meantime Donald Trump’s inauguration – a $150 million extravaganza funded by Pfizer, OpenAI, Amazon, Meta and a constellation of cryptocurrency firms – is set for January 20.

That’s just two weeks away, and Trump has pledged to impose what would be a crippling 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico “on Day 1” unless measures regarding flows of illegal migrants and drugs are somehow stopped.

We’ll see. The thing is, on Day 1, Canada’s federal government will be locked in the interregnum between the Trudeau epoch and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s new “common sense” order. We’re sitting ducks.

What would a Conservative Great Leap Forward look like?

Poilievre deserves much credit for correctly diagnosing the several possibly fatal wounds the Justin Trudeau decade has inflicted on this country. About that, here’s something I found fascinating over the holiday hiaitus.

It would be worth your time to take in Poilievre’s conversation with Dark Web archdruid Jordan Peterson over the weekend, and then have a listen to the year-end remarks of the lonesome American socialist warlord Bernie Sanders.

Going by my own 90-minute encounter with Peterson a couple of weeks ago I can say that it isn’t easy to keep the conversation going exactly along the lines one might prefer. Not to criticize Peterson’s interviewing style but I can’t fault Poilievre for failing to get into any number of the the existential dysfunctions Canada is enduring.

Even so, Poilievre comes off more like an intelligent and slightly nerdy Canadian version of Bernie Sanders than the doofus Canadian iteration of Donald Trump that the Liberals and New Democrats have so strenously tried and failed to make him out to be.

Fun example: On Saturday, the NDP MP Peter Julian attributed Poilievre’s popularity to a “massive foreign interference strategy. . . the only reason Pierre Poilievre is leader of the Conservative Party right now.” He didn’t say this while drunk in a private conversation among fellow NDPers. Julian said this publicly, on the insufferable Elon Musk’s X, drawing on a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory from last August.

At least the Conservatives are not crazy people

Today, the Feast of the Epiphany, is the anniversary of the Trumpist insurrection of January 6, 2021, an event that remains an open and profoundly embarrassing wound among Americans. I fully realize that there are some yobbish Putin fanciers at the outer fringes of Canada’s Conservative Party, but give me a break.

Can you imagine Canadian Conservatives storming Parliament Hill, smashing windows and breaking down doors and baying for blood? Of course you can’t. And you certainly can’t imagine Poilievre even coming close to countenancing such conduct, so don’t even try.

I don’t carry any water for Poilievre, but I am persuaded that he’s genuinely and sincerely concerned about the wretched state of affairs to which working-class Canadians have been reduced. Besides, Poilievre isn’t just the best alternative we’ve got. He’s the only alternative. Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats are a caricature of the party they inherited, so here we are.

My National Post readers and this newsletter’s subscribers will know that I am not bubbling with optimism that Poilievre’s remedies can possibly heal what Canada has sustained. Without getting into all that, I’ve had my say, and while Poilievre’s overall analysis of the Trudeau era’s calamities is grounded in hard facts and driven by empathy, his “Axe the tax, Build the homes, Fix the budget, Stop the crime” remedies are woefully insufficient to the circumstances of the real world.

For starters, the immediate crisis a Poilievre government will face is the major cause of the economic dislocation we’re facing, and he’s been quiet about it: It’s not just that Canada’s housing and jobs economies have no room for roughly three million people in this country who are here on various kinds of “temporary” status. It’s more like 4.9 million people whose visas are going to expire before the end of this year.

No amount of tax-axing is going to deal with this, and you’d need something along the lines of a Mao-era Great Leap Forward to “build the homes” to house them all in residential markets that would be even vaguely affordable for most people. And to do that you’d have to tear down Canada’s cities and build a grim Leninplatz on top of each heap of rubble.

Here’s just one other little thing that could stand in the way of any effective legislative agenda that Poilievre might want to embark upon. Almost all the current occupants of the Upper Chamber are senators appointed by Justin Trudeau. So, that’ll be fun: on top of everything else, the prospect of forcing a constitutional crisis just to get anything done.

Not to be dreary, but about the brokenness, but see Notes on the Coming Disturbances, and a earlier assessment: Nearing Nine Years Since Year Zero, So there’s all that.

It’s not just Canada that’s broken. It’s the Liberal Party.

To build the new postnational state in place of what we’ve been badgered to understand as the genocidal old-stock white supremacist settler-state patriarchy that Trudeau so gallantly set out to save from itself, the Liberal Party had to be refashioned to serve as the conduit to Parliamentary power and privilege. See It’s 2025. Welcome to the Thunderdome.

Bear in mind that Justice Marie-Josée Hogue’s Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions is expected to issue its final report before the end of this month. The inquiry’s long-delayed and filibustered timetable had anticipated that Hogue’s proposed structural changes would be in place well before what was presumed to be an October 2025 federal election.

Here’s the thing about that. Never mind that owing to Team Trudeau’s rewriting of the party constitution we still don’t know who elected Trudeau to the leadership of the Liberal Party in the first place, and there’s been no inquiry into the massive infusions of weirdly coordinated Mandarin-bloc donations to Trudeau’s own riding association warchest in the aftermath of his 2015 capture of a Parliamentary majority.

See: Liberals are leaving an ungodly mess for Poilievre’s Conservatives to clean up; New report details just how easily China can mess with Canadian elections. In that piece, and in the Thunderdome newsletter, I refer at length to the findings in this in-depth analysis published by the Canadian International Council: Beyond general elections: How could foreign actors influence the prime ministership?

While all the talking-head punditry and chat-show panelists are preoccupied with speculation about just who might emerge as Justin Trudeau’s successor, here’s just one fact that has gone unnoticed. If you simply happen to be domiciled even temporarily in this country, you only have to be 14 years old to cast your vote for the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

All for now.

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Trudeau’s ‘Online Harms’ bill likely dead now that Parliament has been suspended

Published on January 7, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

There is a good chance his now-infamous ‘Online Harms’ bill will be scrapped

An internet censorship bill which would have censored legal online content posted on social media through burdensome regulations is likely dead now that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has prorogued Parliament until the end of March.

Bill C-63, known as the Online Harms Act, was put forth under the guise of protecting children from exploitation online but also sought to expand the scope of “hate speech” prosecutions, and even desired to target such speech retroactively and preemptively.  

The bill had called for the creation of a Digital Safety Commission, a digital safety ombudsperson, and a Digital Safety Office, all tasked with policing internet content. It was blasted by constitutional experts as troublesome.

Due to Trudeau announcing on Monday morning that he plans to step down as Liberal Party leader once a new leader has been chosen, Parliament has been shut down. This means all bills, committees and other meetings have all been canceled.

In Canada, the procedure of proroguing Parliament, which is not often used, must first be approved by Governor General Mary Simon. On Monday, she granted Trudeau’s request to prorogue Parliament until the end of March as the Liberals select a new leader.

Canada’s House of Commons procedure and practice reads, “Bills which have not received Royal Assent before prorogation are ‘entirely terminated’ and to be proceeded with in the new session, must be reintroduced as if they had.”

“On occasion, however, bills have been reinstated by motion at the start of a new session at the same stage they had reached at the end of the previous session; committee work has similarly been revived.”

The likelihood of bills being “reinstated” via a motion is highly unlikely, as come March when Parliament resumes, the government will likely fall, as all opposition parties have promised to vote no-confidence in the Liberal government.

Bill C-63 bill’s “hate speech” section is accompanied by broad definitions, severe penalties, and dubious tactics, including levying preemptive judgments against people if they are feared to be likely to commit an act of “hate” in the future. 

Details from the now-defunct Bill C-63 showed the bill could lead to more people jailed for life for “hate crimes” or fined $50,000 and jailed for posts that the government defines as “hate speech” based on gender, race, or other categories. 

Bill C-63 was panned by many as being so flawed it would “never” be enforced.

Other bills that are now likely dead include the highly criticized “pandemic prevention and preparedness” Bill C-293, which sought to give sweeping powers to the government in future so-called emergencies, and the Senate’s S-210 bill, which claimed to want to prevent children from accessing online pornography but could have also ushered in a totalitarian digital ID system according to critics.

The last time Trudeau prorogued Parliament was in 2020 when he was under scrutiny for the WE charity scandal.

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Former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall on working with (or against) Justin Trudeau

Published on January 7, 2025

Todayville

From a FaceBook post by former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall

Your Mom likely told you what mine told me – if you can’t say something nice ..don’t say anything at all. So maybe that’s why it has taken me a day to offer a few thoughts on Trudeau’s resignation announcement yesterday. I miss my Mom everyday but I’m not sure I will be able to follow her advice for this post. (On the other hand.. remembering some of her comments during the Trudeau years – she might be fine with this!)

I truly believe that those who put their name forward for public office, no matter how much I might disagree with them personally and politically should be thanked for their willingness to wade into the increasingly toxic waters of politics. But the undeniable truth is that Canada would be better off today had he decided not to follow in his father’s footsteps.

His Prime Ministership was manifestly the most divisive and economically damaging of any in our history…including the record of the elder Trudeau ..who generationally knee-capped the economy of western Canada with the National Energy Program.

I dealt with this particular Trudeau in my old job at First Ministers’ Conferences, in bilateral relations and one on one discussions. He struck me as someone who was the product of an abiding central Canadian/Quebec world view with a focus on progressive trends rather than policy development or political and economic thought. That was my impression anyway.

Somewhere along the way he found and then clung to wokeism and an obsession with man-made climate change. They were very trendy things for those on the left. Shiny buttons that permanently distracted Trudeau.

His government continues to risk our economy, our trade competitiveness and exacerbate affordability issues for all Canadians with his forced march to a carbon tax that in 4 years will be a debilitating $170.00 per tonne. All in the name of reducing Canada’s emissions that account for less than 2% of global emissions. Imagine – stubbornly pursuing a policy like his carbon tax that is that damaging – in the name of maybe, possibly reducing emissions by a quantum that will make no impact..no change on this thing you’ve sworn us all to fight – climate change. A leader shoving his citizens ahead of him into a winless fight, forcing them to pay for the costs of that fight and risking the competitiveness of the entire economy (at a time when we are now facing the threat of Trump’s tariffs).

The carbon tax is just one policy on a laundry list of damaging and often feckless policies that Trudeau has introduced in his 10 years as Prime Minister. He all but declared his disdain for the western Canadian resource sector. He never much liked how we made a living in the west; how we live by and rely on fossil fuels in rural Canada. He never respected the values that a majority of western or rural Canadians hold dear.

He, more than any PM in contemporary Canadian political history, was found wanting in ethics and third party investigations. He chose to fire or force out strong female Ministers rather than be held accountable for things he very much said…and very much did. All this from a self-proclaimed feminist who would regularly lecture Canadians on the importance of his ‘feminist’ view.

He offered the same when it came to Reconcilation yet he failed to fulfill his promise for clean drinking water on First Nations reserves.

He demonized millions of Canadians who were represented by the Freedom Convoy or who had concerns about lock- downs and vaccine mandates – dismissing them as un-Canadian and fringe and ..much worse.

His fiscal record and tendencies were so bad that even the big spending, big government advocating Chrystia Freeland quit his cabinet.

People will observe that Canada has never had an NDP Prime Minister. I beg to differ.

He was unserious. He said things and believed things like “The budget will balance itself” and “I don’t think too much about monetary policy “

Incredible.

I recall when I was the lone Premier and Saskatchewan was the lone province opposing his carbon tax. I know the kinds of things he and his Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said about us…about Saskatchewan..behind closed doors and to some whom they believed had assured discretion.

And yet despite all of this – I did not feel as gratified as some did when the news broke yesterday. You see yesterday was a good day for the Liberal Party of Canada. Or at least a better day than they have had in a long while. Granted the Liberals have huge hole from which to dig out but the digging could not begin until Trudeau quit.

I’d rather he had decided to lead his party into the next election. We would be much more assured of much needed change had that been the case.

Because make no mistake – with him or without him – this is a new Justin Trudeau-shaped leftwing, woke, anti-resource development Liberal party of Canada. Long gone is the pragmatism of the Chretien/Martin era. Trudeau policies for the most part will continue to be front and centre with the Liberal party long after he is gone.

I hope the Conservative Party of Canada keeps it head down, humbly asking Canadians to be their agents of much needed change.. and running like they are 10 points behind – not 20 points ahead.

I believe that Canada as we have known it- hangs in the balance of the next election. If somehow, we continue to have a federal government with the ghost-vestigial policies of the man who announced his departure plans yesterday… well that would very bad for the west and not much better for the rest of the country.