Opinion
Opinion writer says Trudeau is the future and Scheer is a return to the past
This post was contributed by Red Deer blogger Garfield Marks
Faster Horses
In less than 100 days we will be voting federally, either for the “past” or for the “future”, because apparently the “present” is unsatisfactory.
Here in Alberta, we yearn for the good old days when we had big pay cheques, big houses, big trucks, big bikes, big quads, big trailers, big boats and big payments. We worked hard and we played hard.
The world evolved around us, over time, and things changed. Our vehicles went from 350 C.I. and 5 miles per gallon at 50 cents per gallon (4.5 litres) to 3.5L and 50 miles per gallon or 18 kms. per litre at ($1 per litre).
Then the environment started having a mid-life climate crisis and consumers started looking for alternatives. Politicians started playing politics and pipelines did not get built and production began to suffer. Big paycheques shrank.
4 years or so Albertans turfed out the provincial government of the day, because they seemed so out of touch with the needs of Albertans. They voted for the future and things started changing but the big paycheques did not return and even though the future was improving it wasn’t the good old days. A few months ago they turfed out the “new” provincial government and brought back the re-branded “old” government and Albertans have not yet returned to the good old days.
4 years or so Canadians turfed out the federal government of the day because they seemed out of touch with the needs of Canadians. They voted for the future, a new government, and things started changing.
Yet oddly enough this “new” federal government, so disdained by Albertans, did what the “old” government was unable or unwilling to do. They bought a pipeline company for billions and moved forward and approved a new pipeline to encourage oil production. Necessary for those Big paycheques and big oil for Albertans.
Albertans will still likely, vote to turf this “new” government out. Well, they want to bring in a carbon tax. That could cost Albertans $10 per week before rebates, and that is a tragedy.
Never mind that this same “new” government invested billions to bring back the big paycheques, that $10/week before rebates is a no go.
This “new” government had nothing to gain, politically, in Alberta helping the Alberta economy in a political rivalry, so why do it? If they had not purchased and approved the new pipeline they would have gained political support in a majority of other provinces but now they are losing support, in other provinces, and could lose their majority in less than 100 days.
In 100 days we will be voting for the future or the past because presently we still have the big houses, big trucks, big toys, but not the big paycheques of the good old days. We voted for the past a few months ago and no big paycheques, yet, so maybe it’s the next time, is the charmer, when we get to go back to the good old days.
Since 1867 Canadians have seen many great economic engines, whale oil, furs, nickel, fisheries, forestry, coal, railroads, and they were great but temporary and now we face another transition. Change is hard.
Henry Ford pushed through change on an unsuspecting and often times uncooperative and unwilling public. He was once reported to have said: “If I had asked what the public wanted, they would have said, faster horses.” but he voted for the future.
In 100 days are we going to vote for the future or for the past with dreams of faster horses? I am hoping for the future, you?
Garfield Marks
National
Doug Ford is calling an election to save his political skin and Justin Trudeau’s government
Ford is the ultimate Red Tory, a faux conservative and faithful apologist for Trudeau
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has just called an election for two reasons: to keep himself in power and to keep the Liberal Party in charge of the Canadian government. Ford has been in the pocket of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for so many years. He has been his constant political companion, especially during the Covid pandemic when Ford stood rigidly by Trudeau over lockdowns and mandates. When Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to flatten the Freedom Convoy, Ford was there all the time, not just approving of Trudeau’s decision but becoming an active cheerleader for the Liberal government.
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Ford has done little to nothing for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada because he’s not a Conservative or a small-c conservative. Ford is a “Progressive Conservative” or Red Tory who is indistinguishable from a Liberal. His party’s name is an oxymoron but Ford is just a moron who pretends to lead something called the Ford Nation, feigning some degree of populism, while all the while serving the same elites that Trudeau is in bed with.
Ford has done his utmost to convice us that the Liberals have a border security plan. They do not. Spending $1.3 billion on the border OVER SIX YEARS is not a plan, it’s a poor excuse for policly. And just look at how the Trudeau government preserves these woke programs even as it kicks the can of border security way down the road. But Ford, who seemed to be pretending that he had actually seen this “plan” tried to suggest that the Liberals had the situation well in hand.
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“Minister [Dominic] LeBlanc laid out the plan. It’s a fabulous plan. Let’s get out there and tell the people of Canada they’ve worked hard on it. So what I said this morning after seeing the plan, it’s a solid plan, and it’s going to work,” he said, noting that Public Safety Minister David McGuinty was coordinating everything with all the relevant agencies and police forces.
“It’s a collective, collaborative group that are going to secure our borders. But the numbers that I have seen, it’s impressive, and the plan is impressive as well. Specifics about what this plan involves, I’ll leave that up to the federal government. I’ll leave, leave that up to Minister McGuinty to get out there and put the plan in front of the Canadian people. But it’s a solid plan,” Ford rambled on, adding that he had never even met McGuinty and “I wouldn’t know him if he walked through the door right now.”
The current tariff crisis with US President Donald Trump is all about Canada not securing its border and not doing anything to change that posture. Ford has been Trudeau’s echo since Trump first threatened to slap on the tariff, joined at the hip with him, supporting his Team Canada charade that is really Team Trudeau and welcoming a trade war with Trump. The Liberals, whether they go into the next election with Trudeau at the helm or not, don’t want to run against Poilievre and the Conservatives because they are 20 to 30 points behind in the polls. They want the next federal election to be against Trump because the only hope the Liberals have of winning is to pretend to be the party of Canada.
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This works well for Ford as well. He can parade around as the politician who puts his country above self but that is precisely what he is not doing. Ford wants a provincial election now because there is some profoundly bad news in the offing for Ford and his corrupt government. Trudeau has co-opted Ford on his electric vehicle agenda that has squandered $52.5 billion in taxpayer money and ensured that the premier stood by his side every time he was announcing another EV manufacturing plant in the Ontario. The future of EVs looked pretty certain six months ago when the Green New Deal was ascendant in the US and it looked like the gas-powered vehicle was slated for the planned obsolescence of stupid government decrees and environmental extremism.
The Liberals, whether they go into the next election with Trudeau at the helm or not, don’t want to run against Poilievre and the Conservatives because they are 20 to 30 points behind in the polls. They want the next federal election to be against Trump because the only hope the Liberals have of winning is to pretend to be the party of Canada.
Not so today. Trump has changed all of that with the stroke of a pen, ending all EV mandates and removing any future sanctions of the internal combustion engine in an executive order. EVs are essentially finished for now and no one is buying them. There is no market for the cars being assembled in Windsor and St. Thomas. These plants are destined for failure. That’s why Ford has to move now, before the closures begin and before the unemployment begins. Ontario will also be facing an economic catastrophe from Trump’s 25 percent tariff and all of Ford’s bluster and BS will have done nothing to prevent it. If Ford does not seek reelection now, his chances of winning another mandate will be extremely low.
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What really has Ford panicked is Trump’s talk about not needing to buy any cars made in Canada. That sounds like the dissolution of the Auto Pact that has been a mainstay of the Ontario economy for 60 years.
But of course, he is also helping Trudeau to avoid an early election and the Liberals could well campaign in the summer or fall as the anti-Trump party. The Conservatives could be almost irrelevant by that time if they can’t differentiate themselves from the Liberals and demand that voters go to the polls to elect a legitimate government that can negotiate with the US instead of remaining with a snide, insouciant prime minister who continues to ignore the border security that the Trump has insisted we deliver on while continuing to fire insults his way.
Currently, the only Canadian politician who is really working for Canada is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who is actively negotiating with Trump. Unfortunately, Trump apparently doesn’t even know that Poilievre exists and is continues to talk about hockey great Wayne Gretzky becoming the next prime minister. Poilievre needs to correct this misunderstanding immediately, start traveling with Smith to Washington if necessary. But he has to become a part of the process and stop letting Trudeau and Ford blather on about retaliatory tariffs and the punishment they think they are going to administer to the US.
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Last Monday, Transport Canada released a bombshell statement, announcing that the Trudeau government’s program granting a $5,000 rebate to Canadians purchasing an Electric Vehicle (EV) had run out of money and would be discontinued, “effective immediately.” This followed a prior announcement from the government of Quebec that they would be suspending their own subsidy, which had amounted to $7,000 per EV purchased.
This is, of course, a game changer for an industry which the Trudeau government (as well as the Ford government in Ontario) has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in. That’s because, no matter the country, the EV industry is utterly dependent upon a system of carrots and sticks from the government, in the form of subsidies and mandates.
EVs have remained notably more expensive than traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles, even with those government incentive programs. Without them the purchase of EVs becomes impossible for all but the wealthiest Canadians.
Which is fine. Let the rich people have their toys, if they want them. Though if they justify the expense by saying that they’re saving the planet by it, I may be tempted to deflate them a bit by pointing out that EVs are in no way appreciably better for the environment than ICE vehicles, how all the lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, aluminum, copper, etc, contained in just one single EV battery requires displacing about 500,000 lbs of earth. Mining these materials often takes place in poorer countries with substandard environmental regulations.
Moreover, the weight of those batteries means that EVs burn through tires more quickly than gas-and-diesel driven vehicles, and wear down roads faster as well, which among other issues leads to an increase in particulate matter in the air, what in the old days we referred to as “pollution.”
That is a potential issue, but one that is mitigated by the fact that EVs make up a small minority of cars on the road. Regular people have proved unwilling to drive them, and that will be even more true now that the consumer subsidies have disappeared.
Of course, it will be an issue if the Trudeau Liberals get their way. You see, Electric Vehicles are one of the main arenas in their ongoing battle with reality. And so even with the end of their consumer subsidies, they remain committed to their mandates requiring every new vehicle purchased in Canada to be electric by 2035, now just a decade away!
They’ve done away with the carrots, and they’re hoping to keep this plan moving with sticks alone.
This is, in a word, madness.
As I’ve said before, the Electric Vehicle mandate is a terrible policy, and one which should be repealed immediately. Canada is about the worst place to attempt this particular experiment with social engineering. It is famously cold, and EVs are famously bad in the cold, charging much slower in frigid temperatures and struggling to hold a charge. Which itself is a major issue, because our country is also enormous and spread out, meaning that most Canadians have to do a great deal of driving to get from “Point A” to “Point B.”
Canada is sorely lacking in the infrastructure which would be required to keep EVs on the road. We currently have less than 30,000 public charging stations nationwide, which is more than 400,000 short of Natural Resources Canada’s projection of what we will need to support the mandated total EV transition.
Our electrical grid is already stressed, without the addition of tens of millions of battery powered vehicles being plugged in every night over a very short time. And of course, irony of ironies, this transition is supposed to take place while our activist government is pushing us on to less reliable energy sources, like wind and solar!
Plus, as I’ve pointed out before, the economic case for EVs, such as it was, has been completely upended by the recent U.S. election. Donald Trump’s victory means that our neighbors to the south are in no immediate danger of being forced to ditch gas-and-diesel driven cars. Consequently, the pitch by the Trudeau and Ford governments that Canada was putting itself at the center of an evolving auto market has fallen flat. In reality, they’ve shackled us to a corpse.
So on behalf of my fellow Canadians I say, “Thank you,” to the government for no longer burning our tax dollars on this particular subsidy. But that isn’t even half the battle. It must be followed through with an even bigger next step.
They must repeal the EV mandate.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
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