Canada’s Corrupt Liberal Government

Justin Trudeau has been juggling the climate change file since he took office. After eight years of twirling, there were just too many parts in the air at the same time. It’s now come crashing down and no one who understands the complex issue is really surprised.

There are different tools in the public policy toolbox to deal with dangerous emissions.

You can take a strictly regulatory approach, saying that certain emissions and substances are banned. That’s the essence of the Montreal Protocol, adopted internationally to deal with substances that had been depleting the ozone layer. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were forbidden outright.

The NDP voted for a Conservative motion to exempt all forms of home heating from the federal carbon tax on Monday.

In some ways, it was not so surprising, given the NDP’s preoccupation with affordability.

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But the New Democrats voted against a similar Conservative motion last year and the change of strategy is likely not unrelated to the Liberals being a government in crisis.

Canada’s premiers lashed out at the federal government Monday, saying Ottawa is treading on thin ice by signing bilateral housing deals directly with municipalities while leaving provinces out of the mix.

The premiers also faulted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for not having convened an in-person first ministers’ meeting in five years.

At a time when the country is facing a series of crises — a housing crunch, a stressed health-care system and big changes in climate policy — the country’s premiers need face-time with Trudeau, they said.

OTTAWA — The Public Health Agency of Canada is refusing to disclose any information on how it lost $150 million in taxpayers’ money for an unfulfilled contract with an undisclosed vendor last year.

Who was the contract with? What was it for? And why did it go unfulfilled, leading to a loss of $150 million? Those are all questions the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has repeatedly refused to answer.

Justin Trudeau came into office on the spume of Canadian-level celebrity, built on a persona of ostentatious, idle gestures and token cheer (selfies, socks, costumes), the endless vocalization of woke crackerjack-box slogans and a smile cemented in place that had all the warmth of well-gelled cement. Just style. Style, understood as the adoption of surface mannerisms in place of deeply settled convictions, convictions built on a real attempt to understand Canada, to relate to all its regions, and an appreciation (which does not mean agreement) of the ideas, lifestyles and situations of mainstream Canadians: style adopted as a campaign dynamic.

“With this amendment we can at least draw a line,” Quebec Senator Pierre Dalphond told the Senate’s agriculture and forestry committee.

Just one week before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he planned to exempt home heating oil from the carbon tax, in a desperate bid to curry favour with voters in Atlantic Canada, the committee was dealing with another proposed carve out.