Justin Trudeau Has Failed To Preserve Canada’s Prosperity And Security

By Spencer Fernando, Exclusive to the National Citizens Coalition

Ahead of their attempts to flee from any and all accountability from the POEC ruling, the Liberals have been ensnared in yet another ethics scandal.

This time, it’s Liberal MP Greg Fergus.

His infraction was somewhat minor compared to the big scandals Trudeau has found himself in, but it still speaks to a government that has stunningly low ethical standards. 

But should we expect this to change?

After all, this current iteration of the Liberals under Justin Trudeau has been ‘ethically challenged’ since taking office.

And it all starts at the top.

Trudeau has set the ‘standard’, and it’s about as low as it gets.

He can’t lecture his own colleagues on ethics since they would just laugh in his face (or more likely nod in favour while he’s around and then laugh when he leaves the room).

And, seeing him get away with numerous ethical ‘shortcomings’ and remain in power has certainly emboldened both Trudeau and the broader Liberal power structure.

Yet, if ethics scandals were enough to bring down Trudeau, he wouldn’t have won in either 2019 or 2021.

Certainly, those scandals have taken a toll on his image (the Liberals have lost the popular vote in the past two elections), but it hasn’t been enough for the CPC to get back into power.

Part of this is clearly the impact of having much of the media become increasingly dependent upon the Liberal government for their funding. They have no incentive to see Trudeau lose, and indeed have a significant incentive for him to stay in office. (They also find themselves increasingly ideologically aligned)

That said, there has also been a shift in public sentiment.

A deep level of cynicism can be felt throughout the country, and many people seem to expect less from those in power.

Perhaps this was inevitable, with social media making it so much easier to expose hypocrisy and wrongdoing.

To preserve their own sanity many people just accept a blanket level of corruption and wrongdoing.

Another factor – and the one most relevant for Canadian politics going forward – is that the stakes have risen dramatically.

The world is more unstable and dangerous as concerns about war, supply chains, basic personal freedoms, democracy-vs-autocracy, energy, and more are elevated, pushing ‘lesser’ issues into the background.

Think of the issues that dominated the 2015 election.

How to deal with a balanced budget.

Whether to legalize marijuana.

Who had the best hair.

Those issues all seem so charmingly small-ball and innocent compared to the sheer weight of issues facing our nation and our world today.

When things are nice and peaceful and safe, voters can afford to be concerned about how pure the ethics of their leaders may be.

But when things get more serious, more tangible concerns about who can maintain prosperity and security come to the fore.

And this is where Trudeau’s real weakness lies.

Canada is less prosperous and less safe – both internally in terms of crime and externally in terms of national security – than we were in 2015.

It’s not even close.

Thus, Trudeau’s main problem isn’t that he and his government have often been deeply unethical (though that’s obviously a bad thing), his main problem is that the country is in a dire state.

When it comes to the most basic tasks of the federal government, Trudeau has failed.

Worse, he continues to double down on his failed approach.

He can’t even learn from his mistakes.

And the rare things the Liberals do get right – such as finally showing some concern towards Canada funding research partnerships with China’s military scientists (I can’t believe I even had to write that) – they only move in the right direction after massive amounts of pressure and wasted time. And in today’s Globe, it has been confirmed that the CCP indeed worked to get Trudeau elected.

Look at all the time we lost getting F-35s because Trudeau wanted to score political points and be different than Stephen Harper. We are nearly a decade behind our allies and paid way more than we would have otherwise.

The kind of petty, small, and overly-politicized ‘leadership’ Canada gets from Trudeau has real-world consequences.

Thankfully, the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre have kept a strong focus on the tangible failures of the Liberal government, rather than hoping an ethics scandal will bring the Liberals down by default.

While the Opposition does discuss ethical issues – as they should – their main effort has been to draw attention to the reality Canadians can see all around us: economic pain, rising crime, rampant incompetence, and a real sense that things in this country are indeed broken in a myriad of ways.

To sum things up, while Trudeau may have been able to overcome ethics scandals in the past, he now faces a much steeper challenge:

Overcoming the reality of his own failure as a leader.

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