Trudeau Leads With Hypocrisy

Oh how quickly time flies. Only
yesterday it seems Justin Trudeau was haughtily declaring "because
it's 2015!" following the swearing in of himself and his
gender-balanced cabinet, and now here we are rapidly approaching the
one year anniversary of his election. It is at points like this that
typically people choose to take stock and assess how a new government
has performed thus far into their new mandate.
It certainly
cannot be said that Justin, the boy King, has been loitering on the
job; he has been all the hare and none the tortoise when it comes to
pursuing his agenda. He's racked up massive deficits (far in excess
of the teeny, tiny ones of "a modest ten billion a year" he
pledged to in the previous campaign), reversed himself on his
commitments to the First Nations, taken down the Queen's portrait
from the government's walls, withdrawn our jets from the fight
against ISIS, and brought in an entirely unnecessary expansion to the
Canada Pension Plan. What is most remarkable, however, is not these
radical departures from the previous government of Stephen Harper
that Trudeau so recently deposed from the halls of power, but how in
one particular way Trudeau has not only stayed the course of his
predecessor but gone further than he ever would have dreamed.
The
old Harper government was often derided by the opposition for being
arrogantly autocratic, abusive of Canada's parliamentary traditions
and procedures, and riding roughshod over its political opponents. To
be fair, these criticism were not entirely unfounded. All
governments, as time goes on and they grow longer in the tooth and
shorter on patience, tend to go this way eventually. Towards the end
of their mandate, the Tories certainly had become undeniably cynical
and manipulative in their governing style at times, and proved to be
woefully unable to change their tactics from those that were
unsightly but justifiable to ensure their survival as a minority
government when they finally achieved a majority mandate in 2011.
It
is astounding, then, that despite still being in the toddler space of
the lifespan of the government, the Trudeau Liberals have proven to
be such adept students of their old opponents ways that they have
fully surpassed their old mentors in the dark arts of political
subterfuge. The Harper government had a combative relationship at
times with the Parliamentary Budget Office at times over the state of
the nation's finances and could be cagey about revealing information
requested by it, under Trudeau the PBO has openly accused the current
government of deliberately publishing misleading figures to further
its own political narrative. Harper was often chastised for abusing
omnibus bills to ram through legislation without proper parliamentary
scrutiny, is practice has continued under Trudeau without any sign of
lessening. The Tories were famously lambasted in the media for
holding tutorials for their MPs on how to disrupt committees and
filibuster changes they did not like, the Liberals under Trudeau went
so far as to attempt to stack a parliamentary committee on a subject
of no less significance than electoral reform in its own favour only
to back down under intense public pressure. Harper was accused of
being unnecessarily negative and personal in his political attacks,
Trudeau has waved the bloody shirt of one of his own MP's terminal
illness to force through changes to the national anthem (which were
opposed by a majority of the public it should be noted).
Given
all this, it is flabbergasting that Trudeau has coasted through these
various snafus without apparently incurring the slightest scratch. He
continues to be astronomically popular with the Canadian public, and
the reason largely seems to be a matter of tone. Young Justin, it
seems, is just so likeable in contrast to grouchy old Steve that the
public is willing to forgive in him the faults they drove the
previous PM from office over. As David Tomlinson sang in the
childhood classic Bedknobs and Broomsticks "It doesn't matter
how I do it as long as I do it with a flair!" and that seems to
hold true for Trudeau as well. Because he's handsome, and outgoing,
and his wife holds her hand over her heart at public
events, the voters give him a pass on his blatant and brazen
hypocrisy.
From the time of Plato through to the present day,
critics of democracy have held up the superficiality and
shortsightedness of voters as the greatest flaw of the system. They
would gleefully seize on present circumstances as justification for
this view, in my opinion. Am I overacting here? I would argue no.
While it is true that, as noted earlier, all governments tend to grow
cynical and brazenly self-serving over time, even the worst critics
of the Harper years would likely concede that at the beginning of
their mandate the Tories did engage in genuine efforts to introduce
reforms to further transparency and accountability to our governing
institutions. One could, with some justification, hold them to
account for abandoning these principles as time went on, but what
does it say of Justin Trudeau's government that he has not even had
this initial phase of unsullied optimism before reverting to the same
tactics and transgressions of those who came before him.
This
is only compounded by the fact that Trudeau was likely propelled into
office, more than for any other reason, by his pledge to offer a new
kind of politics that was free from the self-serving skullduggery he
criticized the old government of. Voters always get the governments they deserve, it is said, and if Canadian voters are so gullible as
to let such brazen hypocrisy pass then they will indeed deserve
everything that this will mean.
It will be our shame. An eternal shame. Nothing but shame.