As They Sink In The Polls, The Liberals Have Gone All-In On Rampant Misinformation

By Spencer Fernando, Exclusive to the National Citizens Coalition

Let’s take a quick jaunt over to ‘Liberal Land.’

It’s a land of plenty, where crime is low, housing is affordable, and carbon taxes make us richer. It’s a land grateful to have recovered from the era of the dastardly ‘Harper Government,’ under whose watch the nation was far poorer and far more dangerous. It’s a place where the government is saving us from the scourge of social media companies. It’s a place where the government bravely steps in to protect our minds from misinformation. And most of all, ‘Liberal Land’ is a place where the governing party is eminently calm and reasonable, responding to outrageous opposition attacks in a measured and unifying way, always careful to take the high road.

Of course, you may have noticed by now that Liberal Land isn’t a real place. In fact, Liberal Land represents a complete inversion of reality. It’s an upside-down bizarro world where everything is the opposite.

In reality, Canada is in economic decline, crime is rising, housing is unaffordable, and carbon taxes are making us poorer. The country is objectively worse off than it was in the era of the Harper Government. Housing is less affordable under the Liberals, crime is up under the Liberals, and the cost of living is substantially higher. Rather than ‘saving us’ from social media companies, the government is doubling down on their pathetic shakedown of those companies in a manner reminiscent of authoritarian nations. Rather than fighting misinformation, the government is spreading it with abandon. And the increasingly unhinged attacks by the Liberals on the Opposition are further deepening Canada’s growing political divides.

A deliberate decision to deceive

As Liberal polling numbers continue to deteriorate, the pace of their misinformation has increased as well.

What once could have been dismissed as a one-off mistake or a consequence of incompetence by a former minister like Marco Mendicino, is now quite obviously a deliberate strategy to deceive.

Not long after becoming Justice Minister, Arif Virani claimed crime was not going up, even though crime is – by the government’s own measurements – increasing substantially.

And top Trudeau aide Katie Telford, along with many Liberal MPs, spread more disinformation on abortion, falsely claiming there are ‘no pro-choice Conservative MPs.’

What is notable about the surge of misinformation from the Liberals is that they aren’t even trying to hide it.

Telford doubled down.

Virani has refused to correct his false statements.

New Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge makes deceptive claims about Bill C-18 on a daily basis. 

Steven Guilbeault continues to push an economically illiterate and divisive ‘climate plan’ that has done little for the environment.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller continues to ignore the mounting critiques of current immigration targets, dismissing valid concerns and doubling down on a larger and larger influx regardless of the impact on the housing market, labour market, and social services. 

And Justin Trudeau continues to try to simultaneously promote Liberal ‘housing affordability’ measures while washing his hands of a housing market that has become wildly unaffordable under his watch.

But why are the Liberals doing this?

Why do they seem more and more intent on retreating into a fact-free, reality-free ‘safe space’ where they can pretend their policies are working?

Why are they ramping up their misinformation even as they claim misinformation is such a threat to democracy?

Because they have nothing left.

Think about it this way.

If you are deeply ideological and convinced of your own intellectual and moral superiority, what do you do when you’ve had the chance to govern for eight years, impose all your policies, and then find that things are objectively getting worse?

Do you acknowledge your errors and change course?

Or do you double down?

The greatest leaders – those who can put the good of the country ahead of their own ideology – would change course (though hopefully before eight years have passed).

But – whatever else we can say about them – ‘great’ doesn’t describe the current Liberal government.

And so, the Liberals are doubling down.

They can’t sell the reality of life in Canada under their policies, so they have invented a reality in which things are going just fine, and they are selling that to voters instead.

The next election is thus shaping up to be not only a battle of ideas and policies, but a battle over whether our country is willing to acknowledge reality and adapt to it, or whether we will ignore reality and put off dealing with our problems – which would only make those problems far worse.

If recent polls are any indication, Canadians are leaning towards the former. But with the financially struggling media desperate for bailouts and the tech platform shakedowns that only the Liberals can aim to provide, and the government determined to try and lie their way into staying in office, there is no room for complacency among those who want to see Canada finally move on from the Trudeau Liberals.

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