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

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To choose Trudeau’s successor as the Liberal Party’s new helmsperson, you need only be temporarily resident in Canada and 14 years old, and they don’t even check

Après nous, le déluge

It’s over. Well, sort of.

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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2025 Federal Election

Poilievre promises to drop ‘radical political ideologies’ in universities

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has pledged to prioritize funding scientific research over ‘radical political ideologies’ at Canadian universities.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to scrap government funding of “radical political ideologies” in higher education if elected prime minister.

During an April 2 speech in Toronto, Poilievre told a French reporter that his Conservative government will focus on promoting scientific research rather than furthering radical ideologies in Canadian universities.

“The money we spend on research will go to research, not to promoting political ideologies,” Poilievre said. “We want, for example, our science and technology research to go into technological breakthroughs, inventions, innovations, discoveries, cures for terrible diseases that can improve Canadian lives.”

“That is what Canadians expect their tax dollars to go to, not to spend it on radical political ideologies that are first of all completely out of touch with the values of Canadians, and second of all, have no scientific value to our people,” Poilievre added.

This was the second time Poilievre denounced woke spending at universities, the first time being at a Quebec rally last week.

The policy proposal has seemed to draw the ire of some in academia, with Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) executive director David Robinson stating, “It’s worrying that a leader of a political party in Canada would try to dictate how research funds will be granted.”

“We’ve seen the impact of this political meddling south of the border where the Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on universities and the scientific community,” he continued. “This kind of American-style culture war has no place in Canada.”

Under U.S. President Donald Trump, public schools and universities were given until the end of February to eliminate their DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs or risk losing federal funding.

More than 30 states have introduced legislation that would eliminate DEI programs from education as part of a broader push against woke ideology spearheaded by Republicans such as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

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2025 Federal Election

Will Four More Years Of Liberals Prove The West’s Tipping Point?

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The 1997 political comedy Wag The Dog featured a ruling president far behind in the polls engaging Hollywood to rescue his failing ratings. By inventing a fake war against Albania and a left-behind “hero”— nicknamed Shoe— the Hollywood producer creates a narrative that sweeps the nation.

The meme of hanging old shoes from the branches of trees and power lines catches on and re-elects the president. In a plot kicker, the vain producer is killed by the president’s handlers when he refuses to stay quiet about his handiwork. The movie’s cynicism over political spin made it a big hit in the Bill Clinton/ Monica Lewinsky days.

In the recent 2024 election the Democrats thought they’d resurrect the WTD formula to spin off senile Joe Biden at the last minute in favour of Kamala Harris. Americans saw through the obvious charade and installed Donald Trump instead.

You’d think that would be enough to dissuade Canadians who pride themselves on their hip, postmodern humour. But you’d be wrong, they don’t get the joke. Wag The Carney is the current political theatre as Liberals bury the reviled Justin Trudeau and pivot to Mark Carney. If you believe the polling it might just be working on a public besotted by ex-pat Mike Myers and “Canada’s Not For Sale”.

As opposed to Wag The Dog, few are laughing about this performative theatre, however. There are still two debates (English/ French)  and over three more weeks of campaign where anything— hello Paul Chiang—can happen. But with Laurentian media bribed by the Libs— Carney is threatening those who stray— people are already projecting what another four years of Liberals in office will mean.

As the most prominent outlier to Team Canada’s “we will fight them on the beaches…” Alberta’s premier Danielle Smith is already steering a course for her province that doesn’t include going to war with America on energy. She asked Trump to delay his tariffs until Canadians had a chance to speak on the subject in an election April 28. Naturally the howler monkeys of the Left accused her of treason. She got her wish Wednesday when Canada was spared any new tariffs for the time being.

Clearly, she (and Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe) have no illusions about Carney not using their energy industry as a whipping post for his EU climate schemes. They’ve seen the cynical flip in polls as former Trudeau loyalists hurry back to the same Liberal party they abandoned in 2024. They know Carney can manipulate the Boomer demographic just as he did when he called for draconian financial methods against the peaceful Truckers Convoy in 2022.

Former Reform leader Preston Manning is unequivocal: “’Large numbers of Westerners simply will not stand for another four years of Liberal government, no matter who leads it.’“ So how does the West respond within Confederation to protect itself from a predatory Ottawa elite?

Clearly, the emissions cap— part of Carney’s radical environmental plans— will keep Alberta’s treasure in the ground. With Carney repeating no cancellation of Bill C-69 that precludes building pipelines in the future, the momentum for a referendum in Alberta will only grow. The NDP will howl, but there will be enough push among from the rest of Albertans for a new approach within Canada.

In this vein Smith even wants to approach Quebec. While it seems like odd bedfellows the two provinces most at odds with the status quo have much in common .  “This is an area where our two provinces may be able to coordinate an approach,” Smith wrote this week. That could include referendums by the middle of 2026.

Perhaps the best recipe for keeping the increasingly fractious union together is a devolution of power, not unlike that governing the United Kingdom. While Westminster remains the central power since 1997, there are now separate parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that put power closer to the citizen, so that local factors are better recognized in decision making.

With so little uniting the regions of the country any longer, devolution might provide a solution. What form could decentralization take within Canada? A Western Canada Parliament could blunt predatory federal energy policies while countering the imbalances of Canada’s equalization process. Similar parliaments representing Quebec, the Atlantic provinces, Ontario and B.C. would protect their own special interests within Canada. Ottawa could handle Canada’s international obligations to defence, trade and international cooperation.

While the idea is fraught with pitfalls it nonetheless remains preferable to a breakup of the nation, which four more years of Liberals rule under Mark Carney and the same Trudeau characters will likely precipitate. Smith’s outreach case would be the beginning of such a process.

None of this would be necessary were the populations of Eastern Canada and B.C.’s lower mainland remotely serious after snoozing through the Trudeau decade. The OECD shows Canada’s 1.4% GDP barely ahead of Luxembourg and behind the rest of the industrialized world from 2015-2025. As we’ve said before the Boomers sitting on their $1 million-plus homes are re-staging Woodstock on the Canada Pension and OAS. As with Wag The Dog, they’re not getting the joke.

When the Boomers award themselves another four years of taxapalooza and Mike Myers and the other “Canada Not For For Sale” celebs head south to their tax-avoidance schemes how will the Boomers say they’ve left Canada  better off for anyone under 60? We’ll hang up and listen to your answer on the TV.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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