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Opinion

Tuesday-night Trudeau

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17 minute read

Justin Trudeau at Gatineau Airport, Oct 24 – Photo by PW

Posted with permission from Paul Wells


Justin Trudeau in a hangar, before the comeback, if there’s going to be one

If Justin Trudeau’s historic comeback happens, it will start sometime after Tuesday night, when he spoke to a Liberal Party of Canada fundraiser at the one-runway Gatineau Airport, 21 minutes’ drive from Rideau Cottage on the Quebec side of the river.

The prime minister is two months short of his 52nd birthday. Brian Mulroney was not quite 54 when he became the youngest undefeated prime minister, so far, to announce his retirement from politics. This is the sort of week when I look up numbers like that.

The polls since summer haven’t been kind to the Liberals. I have readers who get cross with me when I mention polls, but I cover the most polling-obsessed government in Canada’s history, and I must decline requests to unilaterally disarm.

Trudeau and his ministers do fundraisers all the time, as do the leaders and prominent MPs in other parties. The only difference on Tuesday was that I went to watch. After some embarrassing early headlines about fundraisers soon after the 2015 election, the Liberal Party changed its rules to increase transparency in fundraising. Now reporters get advance notice whenever Trudeau will be speaking at a fundraiser. I wanted to see what Trudeau says at such things these days, precisely because they’re routine events. Hearing how the prime minister talks to friendlies on a Tuesday night near home was, perhaps, the closest I could get to hearing how he talks to himself.

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This event was a fundraiser for Gatineau MP Steven MacKinnon, a former Liberal Party national director who is serving as the government’s house leader while Karina Gould is on maternity leave. Two cabinet ministers were on hand too, Jean-Yves Duclos and Anita Anand. An organizer told the audience he’d been asked to get a smallish crowd out, “a good 50 or so;” since 67 people bought tickets, he was pretty pleased. The party had announced a ticket price up to $1,500. The crowd was of the sort that routinely gets described as overwhelmingly white and male when it’s a Conservative event, which means it was overwhelmingly white and male, but Liberal.

Trudeau spoke for twelve minutes. He opened by saying nice things about MacKinnon and thanked the two cabinet ministers. Poor Duclos thought he was just out to socialize, Trudeau joked, but Duclos is the minister of public services and procurement, “and around here we talk about a bridge.” Gales of laughter from the crowd. The riding association guy had also mentioned a bridge. There has been endless talk about a sixth bridge between Ottawa and Gatineau; neighbours near the various possible routes are leery, but a lot of people hope a new bridge would improve traffic flow, which often includes bumper-to-bumper heavy trucks on ordinary streets through the middle of Ottawa. A lot of the people who want the bridge the most run businesses. Judging from the PM’s choice of comic patter, they won’t have to wait long.

Trudeau thanked the crowd for coming out. “I know very well that everyone has plenty of choices for the various activities they could undertake on a Tuesday night in the month of October,” he said. This may have flattered the selection of fun activities in Gatineau on a Tuesday.

“You chose to come participate in a democratic event,” Trudeau continued. This was an instinct he could only applaud: “We know very well these days that it’s not always very motivating to get involved in politics. To raise your hand and say, ‘No, no, no, I want to participate in our democracy in an active and involved way. To take part in the conversations we’re having as a country in these difficult moments.’”

Trudeau contrasted this positive spirit with what certain other people, so far unnamed, like to do. “It’s very easy to point our finger at politicians, to complain about inflation or the pandemic or interest rates or labour shortages or housing or all these issues. It’s very easy, and many people decide to turn toward anger, anxiety, fear or division. Because it really pays over the short term, in politics, to rely on fear and division. But it’s so much more important to have a responsible, sensible approach, anchored in shared values. To try to bring us together rather than to divide us in an attempt to win a few points in the polls.”

One sensed an emerging central theme of contrast. “Your choice to come tonight to this Liberal event is enormously touching to me,” Trudeau said. “Because for eight years now, we’ve tried to be a government that stayed rooted in real things. In facts. In shared values. We bring people together rather than divide them for strategic reasons.”

Not only does his government, in his telling, think like good people, it does things good people will like.

“We manage to deliver for people. Even in extremely difficult moments like the ones we’re living through. People are struggling, because of the global context, extremely complex geopolitics that have a direct impact on pocketbooks, on groceries and rent. We have an important role to play as a government, to respond to today’s needs. That’s why we’ve made investments to help people pay their bills, to increase competition among the big grocers. We’re there to provide more daycare spaces. We’re there to help with dental care. We’re there to help with the Canada Child Benefit, which has lifted half a million children out of poverty in recent years. We’re there to create economic growth even as we fight against climate change.”

His audience for the night being mostly Quebecers and, as far as I could tell, mostly in business, the Liberal leader refined his course of general flattery to one of specific business-oriented flattery.

“I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to deliver in Quebec: NorthvoltRio TintoREM… These are investments that show how much — here in Quebec where we’ve always understood that environmental protection and economic growth go together — everyone can make progress together.”

This was a pretty upbeat message, as partisan messages often are — we have the right ideas and the right results, and the other team is trying to wreck it all — but here again, as when he lamented how “not very motivating” the political life can be, Trudeau introduced a distinctly mournful note.

“As usual, it’s a bigger challenge to get this message out in the rest of Canada,” he said. At the risk of talking about polls, I couldn’t help thinking Trudeau was referring to recent pee oh ell ells that show Quebec as the only part of the country where his Liberals are in the lead. Despite big federal spending on Volkswagen ($13 billion) and Stellantis (probably more), the clean green future seems not to tempt a lot of Canadians. “It still feels far off, because the day-to-day is still difficult for many Canadians,” he said. “But we know very well that a society and a future are built step by step.…When we stay optimistic, when we’re reasonable, everything becomes possible in the future.”

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This, he said, summing up, was “the political debate we’re having now…. Within two years — probably in two years — we’ll have elections.” That’s when people will get a chance to choose directions.

“Will we go back to the Conservative ways of trickle-down, cuts to social programs, advantages for the well-off in the hopes that they’ll eventually give everyone opportunity? It’s never worked and it won’t work better now.” Or would voters stick with the government Trudeau sees in the mirror? “We’re going to stay responsible but we’re going to keep investing,” he said.

Only now, at the end of his remarks, did Trudeau switch from French to English. “It’s always an incredible pleasure to spend time with people who are dedicated every day to building stronger communities and a stronger country.” And that was the end of that. The applause lasted for sixteen seconds. PMO staff led reporters out of the room — our access ends when the big guy stops talking.

A few observations on all this.

First, I’m struck by the way Trudeau narrowed down his expectation of election timing: “Within two years — probably in two years.” Probably anyone in a position of responsibility in any party would say an election could come any time, it’s wise to be ready, and so on. But in Trudeau’s mind, the supply and confidence agreement with the NDP seems likely to hold. He is not in a rush. Judgment Day isn’t until 2025.

Second, if he’s getting any advice to hit pause on carbon taxes, he sure doesn’t sound like he’s getting ready to take the advice. The heart of his case for himself is the notion that you can have clean energy and a thriving economy, and indeed that the latter depends on the former. That argument doesn’t require a carbon tax — theoretically, if you subsidize enough battery plants gasoline will become obsolete — but nothing in Trudeau’s fundraiser stump speech sounded like he was laying the predicate for a major retreat on carbon taxes.


BIG HONKING UPDATE, MINUTES LATER:

The feds have made a large announcement that shows the risks in making predictions. I quote:

“The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced the government is moving ahead with doubling the pollution price rebate (Climate Action Incentive Payment) rural top-up rate, increasing it from 10 to 20 per cent of the baseline amount starting in April 2024. People who live in rural communities face unique realities, and this measure would help put even more money back in the pockets of families dealing with higher energy costs because they live outside a large city.

“Given the pressures faced by households and small businesses that use oil heating, the Prime Minister also announced that the government is moving ahead with a temporary, three-year pause to the federal price on pollution (fuel charge) on deliveries of heating oil in all jurisdictions where the federal fuel charge is in effect. This pause would begin 14 days from today. While the fuel charge is already returned to consumers through the pollution price rebate, this temporary pause would save a household that uses heating oil $250 at the current rate, on average, while the federal government works with provinces to roll out heat pumps and phase out oil for heating over the longer term.”


Third, and more generally, the case Trudeau was building was for more of the same. “It still feels far off, because the day-to-day is still difficult for many Canadians,” he said, which is how you talk when you’re hoping your ship comes in before people get a chance to pass judgment.

Incidentally, here I think it’s only fair to point out there’s been recent progress on files I often point to as evidence that Liberal plans never pan out. The Canada Growth Fund, the object of this newsletter’s first post, made its first investment this week, a $90 million equity play in a Calgary geothermal energy company. The Canada-US Energy Transformation Task Force held a second meeting. Maybe two years of process news like that will add up to an electorate that’s excited about Canada’s energy transformation. I mean, it’s possible.

Most of all, I was struck by how “more of the same” had better work for the Liberals, because if the boss has a better idea, he’s hiding it well. A leader who once ran on cost-of-living issues…

… is now running on the clean-energy future that feels tantalizingly out of reach, and lamenting his opponent’s insistence on running on cost-of-living issues. His best hunch about timing is that he has no reason to rush, and his best assessment of his work to date is that he needs to do more of it.

Liberals who feel more of a sense of urgency, futility or wasted energy will just have to get on board, I guess. The leader’s not for turning.

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Great Reset

Are climate-obsessed elites losing their grip over global politics?

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By James Corbett

Bill Gates appears to be spearheading a new push towards a Malthusian ‘One Health’ agenda instead of global temperature concerns amid a sudden shift in the climate change narrative.

Guess what, folks? The climate emergency has been cancelled!

That’s right, as my listeners will know by now, no less a personage than famed climate crusader Dr. [sic] Bill Gates is now admitting that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise“ after all.

As my loyal listeners will also know by now, Gates has his reasons for backtracking on his decades of climate scare-mongering. (SPOILER: it’s not because he’s suddenly realized that the climate scare is a hoax!)

READ: Bill Gates switches stance on climate change, says it won’t bring ‘humanity’s demise’

Unsurprisingly, this very public about-face has caused much hand-wringing in the clique of climate fearmongers. Take Michael Mann – yes, that Michael Mann. He has already penned a lengthy screed to excoriate Bill for raining on the climate doomporn parade.

As for old Billy boy himself, he wants everyone to know that they’re getting him all wrongManBearPig is still super cereal, guys! In fact, Bill’s spending on the climate crusade is actually increasing!

But whether Gates’ backpedaling enables him to win him back his climate-fearing friends or not, perhaps the most important part of his new climate message was the timing of its release. You see, “Three tough truths about climate” – the blog announcing his changing views on the climate emergency – was subtitled “What I want everyone at COP30 to know,” and it was released on the eve of COP30, the U.N.’s annual global climate summit.

So, what does this (anthropogenic) tempest in a teapot tell us about the future of the climate scam? Let’s find out.

COP30

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a party going on in Brazil right now!

No, the party that’s currently underway is #COP30, aka the “Conference of the Parties,” or the annual global climate change conference put on by the U.N. If you want the real skinny on what the COP is and the role it plays in the nascent global governmental power structure, you need to read my editorial from last November, “THIS is How Global Government is Run (and What’s Coming Next…)

Long story short: the “Conference of the Parties” is the annual meeting of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Established in Article 7 of the UNFCCC as “the supreme body” of the convention, it is tasked with “[p]eriodically examin[ing] the obligations of the Parties” to the treaty. It also assesses those parties’ climate change mitigation measures and policies and, of course, “mobilize[s] financial resources” to help line the pockets of U.N. kleptocrats … uhhh, I mean, to appease the angry weather gods.

As I pointed out in my editorial last year, since no one ever reads the fine print of bureaucratic documents, the climate technocrats were able to embed all sorts of goodies right there in the rules of procedure for the UNFCCC COP, such as Rule 30:

Meetings of the Conference of the Parties shall be held in public, unless the Conference of the Parties decides otherwise.

And Rule 32:

No one may speak at a meeting of the Conference of the Parties without having previously obtained the permission of the President.

And Rule 42:

Decisions on matters of substance shall be taken by consensus, except that decisions on financial matters shall be taken by a two-thirds majority vote.

READ: Pope Leo’s Vatican quadruples down on support for the green agenda

Just a decade or two ago, when the vast majority of the public still believed that the climate hoax was “settled science” and that scientists would never lie or twist the truth for a political agenda (oh, how naive!), the annual COP was a truly nerve-wracking affair. Each year, this globalist shindig threatened to put another nail in the coffin of national (let alone individual) sovereignty, and brought the world another step closer to a U.N.-led global government.

In fact, the COPpers admitted as much in their own words. For instance, do you recall that, on the eve of the COP15 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, EU President (and Bilderberg lackey) Herman von Rompuy declared 2009 to be “the first year of global governance” and insisted that the COP in Copenhagen “is another step towards the global management of our planet”?

Back then, when the climate change religion was in the ascendant, it seemed that nothing could derail the globalists and their quest to create a global government on the back of the fake “climate emergency.”

But, interestingly, the cultural tide has shifted in recent years and COP30 is already looking set to be a flop for the climate confabulists.

FLOP30

It’s not just Bill Gates who is spoiling the COP30 party. The U.S. government has already decided it’s not going to send any high-level representatives to this year’s climate hoax conclave.

Even the climate conspirators – perhaps reading the direction the political wind is blowing – have shown themselves reticent to play the game anymore. As of last month, only 64 of the UNFCCC’s 198 parties had even submitted their national plans for cutting greenhouse emissions – plans that are required of each party to the 2015 Paris Agreement. And, according to the climate doom-mongers and corporate fake news repeaters masquerading as “journalists” at The Guardian, those plans that have been submitted “fall drastically short of what is needed to stave off the worst effects of climate breakdown.”

Of course, all of this is made-up nonsense. The COPpers may as well be fretting about how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin or precisely how many unicorn farts are needed to power their trillion-dollar green energy swindle. As Corbett Reporteers know by now, there are dozens of questions that need to be asked (and answered) before we can come to a determination of what “average global temperature“ even means. And that’s not to mention the question of the validity of the temperature records from which such assessments are being made or the reliability of the models that are being used to extrapolate from that dodgy data.

New reports coming out weekly are shining more and more light on how the climate emergency hoax has been perpetrated. This week’s inconvenient truth for the climate fraudsters? A new study demonstrating that reduction in air pollution actually exacerbates global warming.

READ: The real reason why the West is not having children (it’s not just cost of living)

You might expect the fraudsters would be ashamed to continue to lie so brazenly to the public … but if you do expect these power-hungry pathocrats to feel shame over their actions, then you clearly haven’t watched Dissent Into Madness yet. Instead of being remorseful, the psychopathic swindlers are doubling down on their scam, flying to Brazil to put on yet another farce in the name of “saving the earth.”

The first order of analysis – and, sadly, the point at which many critics of the UNFCCC and its “Conference of the Parties” tend to stop – is to simply point out the hypocrisy of the summit’s attendees.

The VIPs fly in on private jets and relax at $1,000/night resorts while they lecture us peons about reducing our comparatively miniscule carbon footprint.

To prepare for the earth-saving event, the Brazilian government felled tens of thousands of acres of Amazon rainforest and destroyed a vital ecosystem so it could build a new highway from the local airport to the summit venue.

In fact, such is the level of hypocrisy on display at these annual soirees that even climate activists have taken to calling it out.

But this isn’t about “hypocrisy,” really. To rephrase something I wrote about Matt Hancock – the Covidiot authoritarian who imposed lockdowns on the U.K. while breaking his own rules to conduct a secret affair – the people who are hectoring and lecturing the public to reduce their carbon footprints aren’t motivated to expand their own footprints out of a cheeky “rules for thee, not for me” mentality. No, they’re doing it because they know the whole “climate emergency” narrative is BS.

In truth, this isn’t about science. It never was. That’s why pesky facts that go against the Angry Weather God religion have been ignored and memory-holed.

Fortunately, more of the public than ever is finally aware that “the science” is not settled. They are waking up to the fact that they’ve been had for the last 40 years by a bunch of Chicken Littles who are not interested in saving the earth but in scaring people into giving over their power to global technocrats.

Hence Bill Gates making his narrative adjustment. Suddenly it’s not about temperature. Now it’s about health! You like health, right?

Given that COP30 is about to belly flop and no one is expecting anything of importance to come out of it, we may be tempted to simply take the win, declare the climate hoax over, and move on to the next news story of the week.

But perhaps we should take a closer look at what’s really happening here before we climate realists throw a party of our own.

STOP30

The first thing to note is that reports of the climate scam’s death may be entirely premature. For those poor, deluded souls who still believe that the new BRICS multipolar world order is going to save us from the dastardly Western technocrats, you might want to read up on how the BRICS are now introducing “multipolar” carbon markets in the name of keeping the 2030 agenda on track.

But what do we make, then, of prominent climate technocrats like Bill Gates seemingly changing narrative tack on the climate doomsday scenario?

Yes, Gates is flipping the Angry Weather God script. He realizes that the public is no longer buying the absurd theory that CO₂ is some magical thermostat with which we can dial the “global average temperature” up and down as desired. Thus, he suddenly wants us to know that temperature isn’t the best way of measuring the impact of climate change. Now, he wants us to concentrate on a different metric: improving lives.

READ: UN to launch ‘disinformation’ taskforce to silence critics of globalist Agenda 2030

This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.

And you know what? If Gates were to stop there, he’d actually be right (more or less). Regardless of the tenths of a degree (tenths of a degree, I tell you!) of “global average temperature” change that may (or may not) have taken place in the post-industrial era, the real point is to enhance the quality of people’s lives in a warming (or cooling) world. To this we might add that the quality of the environment and the well-being of animal life is another relevant factor, but otherwise, this is a much more sensible approach than that of the climate apocalypticists, who insist we must end industrial civilization and eat bugs (or Impossible Burgers) and live in locked-down 15-minute cities to prevent some long-predicted but never-arriving temperature rise.

Of course, as I discussed in my recent appearance on The Jimmy Dore Show, Gates has his own motivations – financial and otherwise – for this change of heart.

As it turns out, Gates is not interested in genuine human well-being. He’s interested in demolishing any roadblocks to the erection of power-hungry AI data centers, and he’s also interested in continuing the climate agenda under another guise: One Health.

You see, the climate agenda was never actually about temperatures or greenhouse gases or preventing a climate emergency. That was just the codswallop that was forced down the public’s throat to create a cadre of true believers (a.k.a. useful idiots) who would be willing to push the real agenda.

The real agenda was always about control. It was about the ability to confine people to their designated eco-ghettos while the real rulers of the planet jet about overhead, monopolizing the earth’s natural resources. It was about imprisoning us neo-feudal peasants in our climate hovels to eke out a subsistence living from the carbon rations doled out to us under the new global government’s Universal Basic Enslavement program.

That’s the vision that the climate technocrats (and their poor, deluded true believers) have been working toward.

So, even if Gates is swapping in a new metric for measuring progress toward that technocratic goal, he isn’t changing the goal itself. Now, he (and no doubt some of his globalist compatriots) will start focusing on the next iteration of this scam: the Malthusian, anti-human “One Health” agenda.

In short: Yes, COP30 is turning into FLOP30. The global government will not be announced in the freshly cleared Amazonian rainforest. In fact, few will pay any attention to anything that comes out of this year’s climate confab.

But that does not mean that the fight against the globalist technocrats is over. On the contrary, we’re just entering into a new stage of that conflict.

READ: Pope Leo XIV warns ‘world is burning’ from ‘global warming’ at first ‘Care of Creation’ Mass

Remember: this isn’t about “equilibrium climate sensitivity” or the inaccuracy of climate models or the non-existence of weather stations. It’s about the attempt to create a one world government. And if the global warming fairytale isn’t working for the technocrats anymore, they’ll just tell us a new fairytale until we stop listening to them altogether.

This is not the time to pat ourselves on the back. We can’t rest on our laurels yet. Rather, now we must redouble our efforts to warn people about this new scam and inform them that it is (at base) the same as the old scam.

Reprinted with permission from The Corbett Report.

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Business

Nearly One-Quarter of Consumer-Goods Firms Preparing to Exit Canada, Industry CEO Warns Parliament

Published on

The Opposition with Dan Knight

Dan Knight's avatar Dan Knight

Standing Committee on Industry and Technology hears stark testimony that rising costs and stalled investment are pushing companies out of the Canadian market.

There’s a number that should stop this country cold: twenty-three percent. That is the share of companies in one of Canada’s essential manufacturing and consumer-goods sectors now preparing to withdraw products from the Canadian market or exit entirely within the next two years. And this wasn’t whispered at a business luncheon or buried in a consultancy memo. It was delivered straight to Parliament, at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, during its study on Canada’s underlying productivity gaps and capital outflow.

Michael Graydon, the CEO of Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, didn’t hedge or soften the message. He told MPs, “23% of our members expect to exit products from the Canadian marketplace within the next two years, because the cost of doing business here has just become unsustainable.”

Unsustainable. That’s the word he used. And when the people who actually make things in this country start using that word, you should pay attention. These aren’t fringe players or hypothetical startups. These are firms that supply the goods Canadians buy every single day, and they’re looking at their balance sheets, their regulatory burdens, the delays in getting anything approved or built, and concluding that Canada simply doesn’t work for them anymore.

What makes this more troubling is the timing. Canada’s investment levels have been falling for years, even as the United States and other competitors race ahead. Businesses aren’t reinvesting in machinery or technology at the rate they once did. They’re not modernizing their operations here. They’re putting expansion plans on hold or shifting them to jurisdictions that move faster, cost less and offer clearer rules. That’s not ideology; it’s arithmetic. If it costs more to operate here, if it takes longer to get a permit, and if supply chains back up because ports and rail lines are jammed, investors will choose the place that doesn’t make growth a bureaucratic mountain climb.

Graydon raised another point that ought to concern anyone who cares about domestic production. Canada’s agrifood sector recorded a sixty-billion-dollar trade surplus last year, one of the brightest spots in the national economy, but according to him that potential is being “diluted by fragmented interprovincial trade and logistics bottlenecks.” The ports, the rail corridors, the entire transport network—choke points everywhere. And you can’t build a productive economy on choke points. Companies can’t scale, can’t guarantee delivery, can’t justify the costs. So they leave.

This twenty-three percent figure is the clearest evidence yet that the problem isn’t theoretical. It’s not something for think-tank panels or academic papers. It is happening at the level that matters most: the decision whether to continue doing business in Canada or move operations somewhere more predictable. And once those decisions are made, they’re very hard to reverse. Capital doesn’t boomerang back out of patriotism. It goes where it can earn a return.

For years, Canadian policymakers have talked about productivity as if it were a moral failing of workers or a mystical national characteristic. It’s neither. Productivity comes from investment—real money poured into equipment, technology, training and expansion. When investment stalls, productivity collapses. And when a quarter of firms in a major sector are already planning their exit, you are not looking at a temporary dip. You are looking at a structural rejection of the business environment itself.

The fact that executives are now openly warning Parliament that they cannot afford to stay is a moment of clarity. It is also a test. Either this country becomes a place where people can build things again—quickly, affordably, competitively—or it continues down the path that leads to empty factories, hollowed-out supply chains and consumers who wonder why the shelves look thinner every year.

Twenty-three percent is not just a statistic. It’s the sound of a warning bell ringing at full volume. The only question now is whether anyone in charge hears it.

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