With apologies for the bizarre line breaks, this is Rex Murphy's eloquent take on the current "government":
"Judging by their performance on the most important files, the current bunch in Ottawa would need to hire a consultant to figure out how to get wet in a thunderstorm, and set up a task force to study how to tie their own shoes.
"Look around you. Canada is in the biggest, most persistent and
threatening crisis since — well since ever. The long-term care homes
are under a blizzard of mortality. There is heartbreak in every small
business in the country. The worry and anxiety level of most everyday
citizens — especially those not shielded by uninterrupted cheques from
provincial and federal governments, and those not serving as a member
of a legislature — is at an all-time high.
"This rich, sophisticated, technologically advanced and altruistic
country of ours is the only G7 nation raiding vaccine supplies
intended for “developing countries.” As some droll Twitter feed
offered, it’s as if the many-mansioned denizens of Toronto’s Forest
Hill were making raids on the food banks, and soaking up all the
Canadian Tire money.
"This government hoards any real details about what vaccines are
here,
how many are “secured” on paper only, and what they have promised to
pay for them, as a miser hoards gold. Every press briefing on this
most important of concerns is a dance of evasion, platitude, confused
projection and sometimes just pure ignorance of what is actually the
case.
"They are the most deliberately obfuscatory, opaque,
access-of-information-allergic administration under the democratic
sun.
"One year into COVID our venerated House of Commons is a
disembowelled,
non-functioning, neglected wreck. The targeted disrespect of the
absolute and central symbol and instrument of our democracy has no
parallel. No “minority” government has ever operated with the smug
insouciance and patented, virtue-perfumed arrogance towards the
Commons as the Trudeau government. This is, when we step back, their
biggest sin.
"Since 1867 no prime minister has abandoned the House of Commons
and
downgraded its significance for so long a period and for such
obviously self-centred and political opportunistic reasons. It is so
much easier, so much safer, so much more convenient — to walk from the
bedroom to the one-printer office and mail in platitudes and arias of
evasion via Zoom.
"What other government has parted ways with a governor general, and
to
top it off, a governor general brought in by the world’s No. 1 “male
feminist” as a role model for young women and girls? The same
male-feminist who conveniently loses all his top-performing female
ministers. Someone should do a “gender analytics” study on Justin
Trudeau’s cabinet.
"Not to worry. It has lost a finance minister over ethics charges
during the mightiest spending binge since the Big Bang. An attorney
general, the prime guardian of our rule of law, was hounded out
because she would not bend the rule of law. The most qualified and
respected woman, a doctor of medicine no less (in other words a real
doctor) could not abide staying in so carelessly unethical a cabinet.
Thus, at the very time Canada would have wished the most competent
person to deal with a once-in-a-hundred years medical emergency, Dr.
Jane Philpott is not even in the government.
"takes up and puts down portfolios with the “greatest of ease,” leaving
no impression behind as he goes — burbles on, during a pandemic, about
planting two billion trees. Imagine, two billion. We only have about
300 billion already! Priorities I guess. Repeat after me the holy
incantation: climate change, climate change, climate change. It’s
better than a vaccine.
"We have two hostages in the tyrannical torture houses of Chinese
prisons. Those poor, suffering and tormented men must truly have been
uplifted — if any news ever reaches them — to learn that their
government, during a world pandemic, was collaborating with the
Chinese government to “jointly develop a COVID-19 vaccine.” Remember
the line from Casablanca — “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in
all the world ...” — and Insert “countries” for gin joints. Of all the
countries in all the world why did the Trudeau government pick ....
China? Incompetence can’t cover it. We need some term that speaks of
dedicated and determined, merciless and staggering wrong-headedness:
the purblind leading the purblind.
"We have had no budget in two years. We have spent more than any
other
government, by far, in our history. We have no idea where all the
money has gone. The auditor general has been denied the resources to
even keep track of a portion of it. There is no coherence, or trust,
between the majority of the premiers and the prime minister. We have
been offered occasional delights, like the celebrated comic opera of
the WE brothers and the (temporary) $43-million gift to them to
administer half a billion dollars of your money.
"The Liberals have given far more time and dedicated energy to the
Derek Sloan affair (whatever that was) than the cancellation of the
Keystone XL pipeline, and the emergent threat of Alberta leaving the
Confederation. (Query for serious panel discussion: Is Canada safe
from Bidenism?) Alberta groans while the Trudeau government spends
over $36 million for “stay-at-home chairs” for its civil service.
"The country is in an economic coma. The House of Commons is a
movie
set. We are shamed in the international community. Contracts on COVID
are all Top Secret. There is zero reliability on any projection made
by a minister or the prime minister on where we are on vaccines and
distribution. Rideau Hall is shortly to be listed on Airbnb. Farmers
have been hit by fuel and carbon taxes. Newfoundland teeters on
bankruptcy. The West has never felt so far out of things. I could go
on.
"Is this what was meant when the rosy words were first pronounced:
Canada’s back?
"To calm yourself, however, there is always this: Climate change.
"Climate change. Climate change. Two billion trees. Two billion
trees.
Home chairs. Home chairs. Derek Sloan."
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