A nation of smelt?

Most ichthyologists will tell you, smelt are small, oily fish that travel in large schools seemingly without leadership and sometimes I am given to wonder whether Canada isn’t a nation of smelt. As a not-so-proud citizen of Canada, I feel it necessary to apologize for the boorishness of the Government of Canada in general and Canadian voters in particular for kicking off an election on this day. As my friend Art Weinreb wrote in these pages, dropping the writ for a general election on the 18th anniversary of 9/11 amounts to a poke in the eye for Uncle Sam.

SNC Lavalin scandal

But then what would one expect, given the fact that Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister, having been exposed as corrupt in a number of scandals, polls exactly the same as his arch-rival, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, who hasn’t had scandal one. That’s saying a mouthful when one considers the scope of the corruption and incompetence for which the Liberals have become famous. I use the term ‘famous’ knowing that it should be infamous, but for some reason Canadian voters see nothing wrong with corruption and incompetence. For starters, there’s the SNC Lavalin scandal that clearly saw the Prime Minister and his toadies attempting to interfere in a criminal prosecution of a Quebec company charged with corruption because if SNC Lavalin were convicted in a criminal matter it would mean job losses in Quebec. And Quebec is vital to the Liberals and particularly so for Trudeau because his home riding is in the same city as SNC Lavalin. Canada’s Ethics Commissioner, Mario Dion, conducted an inquiry into the matter and found the Prime Minister to be in violation of the Conflict of Interest Act. Any Prime Minister with an ounce of integrity would have immediately resigned. But not so with Canada’s high school supply drama teacher cum Prime Minister, nor apparently, to Canadian voters judging by the polls. But that isn’t the half of it. Trudeau famously claims to be a feminist, except for when it comes to inappropriate touching, where ‘people experience things differently,’ according to the Prime Minister, or throwing two female cabinet ministers under the bus and ejecting them from the Liberal Party when they wouldn’t play ball because they had too much integrity.

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Vice-Admiral Mark Norman scandal

Then there is the Vice-Admiral Mark Norman scandal, where Liberal insiders literally destroyed an honorable man’s career with trumped up charges of leaking sensitive documents about ship procurement with only the scarcest evidence. But what was really at issue was the contract not being switched over to Liberal friendly Irving Shipbuilding, which is another clear case of corruption. And seemingly voters don’t care as the polls show. Trudeau’s passage to India was a national diplomatic disaster. From the elaborate (and silly) costumes to the countless gaffes, including Canada House in Delhi somehow managing to invite a convicted killer and Sikh separatist to a reception with Indian diplomats. As Bette Midler famously said, “Tres Shabbay!” Resource mismanagement has become such a huge issue that has cost the Canadian economy over $20 billion in 2018 because of lack of infrastructure to reach foreign markets. If someone wanted to purposefully damage the Canadian economy they couldn’t have done a better job than the Government of Canada did under the Liberals with their purposeful curtailment of energy infrastructure. Yet for some queer reason the polls still show Trudeau even with Scheer. There are many more scandals, missed opportunities and broken promises that are almost too numerous to list, but let’s just cover the highlights:

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In this repressive, politically correct environment, I think people are not open about their intentions so they tell pollsters what they think they want to hear

• Proportional representation (abandoned after the election was won)
• Balancing the budget (never going to happen)
• Responsible economic stewardship (Under the Liberals foreign investment in Canada is rapidly disappearing)
• Brain drain to the US (where taxes are a fraction of what they are in Canada)

So, if we are to believe the polls, it’s a toss-up between the Libs and Tories, despite the many, many missteps and misdeeds of this Prime Minister. But it’s also highly likely that the polls are dead-wrong. In this repressive, politically correct environment, I think people are not open about their intentions so they tell pollsters what they think they want to hear. I think populism is as alive here in Canada as it is anywhere else, despite its bad rap by a smug, holier-than-everyone-else media and I think the Canadian election results will show a voter base that’s fed up. Now, I also recognize the distinct possibility that I could be wrong, in which case I still offer my apologies to America.