Comparing Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre: The Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of Canadian Politics
But it looks like Canadians are going to have to choose between the devil we know, and the devil we don’t.
In a previous blog, I promised to address the inevitable showdown of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the leader of the Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre in the next federal election.
But, before I begin… a quick note.
Every time that I, or any of my journalistic colleagues, opine about Trudeau and Poilievre, the social media trolls come out of the woodwork to proclaim that their favourite political leaders, on whatever side of the political fence they may occupy, are being “unfairly attacked”.
To be blunt… that’s total bullshit. And this personality cult-esque attitude is only detrimental to our democracy.
For instance, I’ve been verbally attacked and insulted too many times to count about my opinions concerning Trudeau and Poilievre, or as I like to think of them, the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of Canadian politics.
Liberals accuse me of disliking Trudeau and Conservatives seem to get the sense that I don’t care much for Poilievre, and, in the interest of full disclosure, they’re right!
Frankly, I don’t like either of those guys.
Both of them are arrogant, and clearly out of touch with the daily challenges most Canadians are facing these days.
One of them has greatly benefited from the wealth that his family has been generating over generations… The other guy has been living off the taxpayer’s dime most of his adult life. So in the off chance that Justin or Pierre happen to be reading this… Please, stop pretending that you understand what it’s like to live paycheque to paycheque, and have any basis in reality for understanding the tough decisions average Canadians are faced with every day about what bills to pay with that paycheque!
Don’t get me wrong. It seems that many, if not most politicians have a larger-than-life ego, and it’s not a sin to be wealthy. But the overwhelming majority of millionaires in Canada worked hard to accumulate their wealth.
Neither of these two did that.
Instead, these guys spread platitudes like manure in a pig sty and expect us to gleefully wallow in their rhetoric.
Trudeau keeps telling us that he and his team “are working hard” to find solutions to our problems, and Poilievre serves up false accusations about the government and flimsy, unrealistic plans to build lots more homes and somehow drop interest rates at the same time. (And we are left to choose between voting for a steaming pile of nothing, or ignorance and lies.)
How is Pierre Poilievre going to fulfill that fantasy? Well, we’re not really sure, and I suspect Poilievre doesn’t know either. But those promises draw huge applause at his Conservative rallies, so we can expect more of the same. Especially since the Conservatives are riding high in the polls these days, and that’s not surprising either because when we are knee-deep in debt, with no end in sight. The government is going to have to shoulder the blame, because we elected them to protect us from the intersecting harms caused by rising inflation rates, corporate price-gouging and housing instability.
We’ve seen Justin Trudeau’s act for the past 8 years and Canadians have decided that what little credibility Justin Trudeau has left is melting faster than the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Which is valid. But, we need to take a long, hard look at the kind of Canada Poilievre wants to create.
At the recent Conservative Policy Convention, Poilievre and the delegates tried to paint a utopian picture of the “good old days” of the 1950’s…. Where everyone who wanted a house had one, and where they lived with their ‘traditional family’ (whatever that’s supposed to mean…).
Poilievre told us that the responsibility of the government is to provide “hope”. Well, that might be a nice political message straight from the Obama book of Optics… but honestly, that statement is naive and just untrue.
The government’s job is simply to provide effective policy solutions, economic opportunities to succeed, and to enshrine and defend our human rights and freedoms.
That means equal opportunities and equitable treatment for all Canadians, regardless of gender, identity or ethnicity. The capacity to live where we want to live, to love who we want to love and most importantly, to not allow a small but vocal minority to impose their myopic version of morality and lifestyle onto the rest of us.
Some of the resolutions that came out of the Conservative Convention seem to challenge and contradict those values, and it’s my hope that most Canadians see this as a problem, if they’re paying any attention.
Political parties that offer no hope ought to be ignored. Political parties that offer FALSE hope ought to be exposed as a threat to our freedoms.
It seems likely that we may see a big change in the next election. But, will it be change for the better, or change for the sake of change? At this point, I don’t know… But it looks like Canadians are going to have to choose between the devil we know, and the devil we don’t.