If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Culture, simply, is your life. So what's "national" culture? Culture is all around you. From bilingual cereal boxes to "Canadian Tire" money. I love American pop culture, but I champion the idea of Canadians recognizing they have a place at the table, too.
Justin Trudeau is our ink blot, a psychological device that lets us project our beliefs onto him, letting us think he stands for us. While he speaks in broad platitudes, his name is also a powerful symbol of Canada, so he is able to bring along voters regardless of substance.
Whether we choose to think about business, health care, education or war, all have undergone transformative change brought about by the information revolution. In fact, every area of modern life is going through this change. Every area except our formal structures of politics and government, that is.
In his most recent video where he thanks donors for their money, the Liberal leader Justin Trudeau looks like a college sophomore playing hacky sack in the quad. What Trudeau says in the video is of little import -- as so often with the aspiring prime minister -- but it's how he presents everything that makes this ad -- initially (and easily) thought to be a joke -- so downright clever.
Trudeau is trying to find a new niche for the Liberal Party. A preliminary look indicated that he is trying to take the Conservative party's old right-of-centre spot on the ideological spectrum. With fewer differences between the two parties, Trudeau's youth and vitality may come as an asset in 2015 when Canadians go to the polls.
Justin Trudeau can present a Liberal party that is stridently progressive on environmental and social policy, and on human rights and multiculturalism, while maintaining a strong commitment to entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth.
Ten percenters are sent out through the House of Commons (i.e.: using taxpayer's dollars) and they are a mail out that is designed to allow an MP to communicate a few times a year with a mass mailing to 10 per cent of their constituents. In this day and age of technology and multimedia communications do we even need ten percenters?
Recent Ipso Reid polls should be good news for Ontario Tory Leader Tim Hudak. Hudak and the Tories are at 37% of decided Ontario voters; Horwath's NDP at 29% and Wynne and the Liberals at 28%. This is real bad news for Premier Wynne and her band of less than merry Liberals. But these polls provide even better news to Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
Trudeau's team responded poorly to the attack ads by pointing out he also taught math, rather than challenging the implication that there's little of value in the teaching of drama. I coached drama and taught the subject for more than 30 years. I am extremely proud of what I was able to accomplish for my students.
Would someone who thinks that the U.S. is deserving of violence on its own soil think the same way if they lost a child in the Boston bombing? Would this misplaced empathy with the terrorists still work if one's own legs were blown off by shrapnel? When Peter Mansbridge asked Liberal leader Justin Trudeau what he would do, as prime minister, in the immediate aftermath of an attack like the one in Boston, Trudeau said that "we have to look at the root causes." But the root cause is only depravity. The line between seeking to understand this depravity, and seeking to justify it, is fine and must be tread upon with care.
According to senior UN official Richard Falk, the killing and maiming of all those innocent people at the Boston marathon can be rationally explained as a by-product of America's many geopolitical acts of attempted global domination. This is similar to Trudeau's conclusion.
Personal learnings from the Countering Violent Extremism portfolio echoed the sentiments that Justin Trudeau expressed following the Boston Bombings -- to get to the root cause to prevent future attacks. Last year I had the chance to work with the Department of Public Safety on National Security Policy, and if there's one thing that you need to focus on in preventing any kind of violence from happening -- whether it be localized gun violence or terrorism -- it's the root cause. Mind you, gun violence and extremism are two very different animals, but what they do share in common is an immature and ridiculous sense of expression through violence.
Justin Trudeau needs to fire his public relations team. Either that, or perhaps the Conservative Party truth ads were entirely correct in depicting Trudeau as being completely devoid of the experience."Doesn't have the judgment or experience to be Prime Minister" could not have rung clearer in Trudeau's first week as Liberal leader.
Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada. O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the ...
Political attack ads are designed to make you think. Their aim is to get you to look at a person or an issue in a different light, one different from what the media or the party's political spin machine wants you to look at. Simply put, they work. While it seems everyone complains about them, they still watch them.
When an act of terror occurs, it takes time to assess what exactly happened. Two hours after the blast, blood was still being spilled, explosives were still being sniffed out, and loved ones were still being contacted to share the terrible news. It was in this chaos that Mr. Trudeau was asked to react -- even before the President of the United States, the FBI, or the State Governor had reacted. What Mr. Trudeau did was answer the truth. A novel concept for some, but a welcome philosophy to Canadians tired of the dreary, divisive diatribe. We don't know who did this, but surely there are ways we can look at root causes and prevent future bloodshed.
