If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
It is that very fact that Trudeau's lack of a steely edge -- that will cause attack ads against him to fail to do what they are designed to do. Instead, they will boomerang, fostering sympathy. There may yet be a Trudeau ascendancy. But Harper and the Conservatives would do well to keep their powder dry and their attack ads in the vaults.
Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada. As I write, the brutish old pro licks his lips, girds his l...
Justin Trudeau is about to head into the national Liberal leadership vote heavily ahead of the competition, with little changing since he first announced his running back in the fall. Below are several of the most often used reasons, and perhaps some perspective on addressing those reasons and hopefully alleviating some of the hesitation in supporting another Trudeau to right the ship and lead the new Liberals in the 2015 election.
Today we learn that Justin Trudeau has once again copied his father. He used his father's infamous words from the 1970 FLQ crisis "Just Watch Me." It's no surprise that he thinks that he can beat Stephen Harper, but he chose the wrongs words to say so. His campaign team must be shaking their heads.
Canadians know that Justin Trudeau is passionate. They know that he is eloquent and thoughtful. They know that he is likeable. That is more than Canadians have known about the last two Liberal Leaders and that is why Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party have already won. That is why the Liberal Party's best chance at success in 2015 is with Justin Trudeau as Leader.
Social services such as job training are best left to the provinces. The constitution grants responsibility over education and healthcare to provinces for the same reason: it is the level of government best able to administer social services.
Can you imagine a leader of one of Canada's main federalist parties supporting laws which give rights to members of one group while denying those same rights to others? I can't. What makes Justin Trudeau unfit to lead the Liberal Party of Canada and the country is his support of segregation.
It was Marc Garneau who was recently saying, "we cannot wait until after the leadership race is over to find out what we signed up for." These comments were, of course, pointed squarely at Garneau's leading opponent in the Grit's leadership race, Justin Trudeau. But what do we do when our father-figure departs from his own wisdom?
My congratulations to Justin Trudeau. My condolences to the Liberal Party of Canada. With Marc Garneau's recent withdrawal from the race for the party leadership, the "battle" is all but won. Marc Garneau offered a glimmer of hope for the optimists amongst us who wished to see a Liberal who might give the Conservatives a run for their money in 2015.
Marc Garneau's decision today to withdraw from the Liberal leadership race was not unexpected. If anything, the only surprise was that Garneau stayed in the race as long as he did. Perhaps he hoped for a last-minute shift in support, or that Liberals would wake up and see what he had to offer? If that was the case he was wasting his time.
In Contender: The Story of Justin Trudeau, Althia Raj portrays the MP for Papineau not as the faux-idiot, but rather as the underdog. All-in-all, Contender simply presents the reader with a man who's got drive and enthusiasm for rustling up a crowd, sort of like a popular DJ. And this is no fault of Raj, or her admiringly exhaustive research, but rather, the subject matter with which she is dealing.
Right now in Canada, we need to get real about the math. That is of course, if you're one of the more than 60 per cent that voted for anyone other than Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party in the last federal election. The political math makes it virtually impossible for any of the opposition parties to beat Harper in the next election.
Poor Marc Garneau. He wanted a one-on-one debate with Justin Trudeau and Trudeau turned him down. That was a smart move. While it's true many people would like to know where Trudeau stands on a variety of issues, there is no reason for him to get involved in a one-on-one debate. He has the most to lose with such a format.
C'mon, give Justin Trudeau a break. Sure, he's overrated, but overrated-ness cuts as hard as it coddles; pricks as much as it praises. As a result, J-Tru gets not only the gushy fawning of fans but also the exaggerated disdain of critics. Justin's bloodline is one asset in his arsenal, but he deserves to (and will) sink or swim on more than that. To tie his prime ministerial suitability to his surname exploitation, or to presume that all his strengths, handicaps, quirks, and annoyances flow from it, is to excuse a lack of deeper introspection from a party that could really use some.
It's no sin to be born into money. But it can be a burden, especially if you're a politician trying to establish a bond with middle class voters, as Liberal leadership frontrunner Justin Trudeau is -- and especially especially if you're counting on young voters. So, while Martha Hall Findlay's sucker-punch during Saturday's leadership debate was crude, it nonetheless represented a real blow the first in this contest, to Trudeau. And if Hall-Findlay's attack stung, wait till the Conservatives and NDP start to take their own jabs at Trudeau's silver spoon.
While many policy areas influence -- positively or negatively -- equality of opportunity, education is first among equals. The very idea of progress is under real threat in this country, for the first time in generations. The Canadian promise, that if you get educated and work hard, you can guarantee a better life for yourself and for your kids, is being seriously questioned. Canadians are rightly concerned that their leaders have lost focus on the policy that is at the heart of this promise: access to affordable, high quality education. In short, the core of Liberal economic policy should be to make Canada the best educated country on Earth. So what should the federal role look like?
