SAINTS PRESERVE US

Monday Morning, You Sure Don’t Look Fine

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, reached her fuckery threshold a week ago today. She wisely quit her job(s) before having to deliver the government’s fall economic statement to the House of Commons knowing she'd be forced to walk the plank afterward. Just as well. She’d overshot her “guardrail” $40-billion operating deficit by some 50-per-cent.

Freeland has emerged from this fiasco spun as a Liberal with integrity. No mean feat given past shenanigans of Canada’s Natural Governing Party, but something of a mulligan during Justin Trudeau’s third term as prime minister, one which began with a needless and opportunistic post-pandemic snap election. Polls were positive for the former Rolling Stone cover boy then. The result, another minority government, was a high school drama teacher’s elaborate panto production gone horribly awry. Tellingly, Freeland’s not the first rat bent on self-preservation to desert HMCS Sunny Ways. The federal Liberal talent pool has become awfully shallow – I’m talking expertise and practical brains over inherited charisma.

Good government, responsible government, is akin to an engine, whether it powers my lawnmower or car. Size doesn’t matter so long as it’s reliable. While it requires maintenance from time to time, its efficiency shouldn’t cross my mind. It’s just there, dependable. Not a big ask; there are other things to think about. Ottawa has seized up. The fan belt snapped.

Canada is a big country with three coasts. It’s been at sea on Trudeau’s watch these past few years. I’ve never devoted much thought to Canadian foreign policy. We were always a middle power with strong ties to our allies. If we couldn’t always pull our weight, we at least had the moral authority to be heard. Our standing in the world order has slipped.

A convicted felon who holds regressive views on a number of issues including trade is set to assume the presidency of the Hysterical States of America. Der Trumpenfuhrer refers to Canada as his fifty-first state and calls our prime minister a governor. I can’t decide what riles me up about his remarks. Is it my latent soft nationalism or the blatant piling on football flag of his wordplay? Kick ‘em when they’re down, that’s what thugs do. India’s secret service executed a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Documents recently released reveal our spies foiled a similar plot by Iran. China habitually interferes with the Canadian democratic process and, like India, harasses its Canadian diaspora. Fuck knows what the Russians are up to.

Domestic affairs have descended into dysfunction somewhere beneath the nadir of farce. Prime Minister Trudeau is flailing in deep, rough waters for his political life. His latest lifesaving gambit was to declare a goods-and-services tax (five-per-cent) holiday for the holidays. From now until sometime in February I won’t pay the GST on a case of beer (see opening paragraph; scratch your head). I’ve never been bribed with my own money before. Payment deferred.

A prime example of inept and ineffectual governance is how Trudeau is managing a strike by Canada Post Corporation employees. CPC is a floundering Crown corporation saddled with a nineteenth century mandate and business model. It needs a thorough reset, a proper reboot. Still, I can mail a letter from Victoria, BC to Charlottetown, PEI for a dollar-something. The corporation handles more than two billion such bargains annually. Postal strikes, alas, are a lot like your relatives, they come around with alarming regularity. Now, national mail delivery isn’t overly glamorous, not like mingling in Davos or posing for a G7 group photo-op, it’s like municipal sewage treatment and garbage collection, somewhat essential. Dirty work, but somebody’s got to do it.

CPC employees walked off the job in mid-November. Whatever your opinion of unions, you’ve got to grant them their pressure tactic expertise. Held hostage for four weeks were charity solicitations, small and medium business fulfillments and passport applications for discounted dream vacations in secure tourist compounds during hurricane season. I missed my subscriptions to The Economist, The Walrus and AlbertaViews. No need to bother with Christmas cards this year. I trust the result of the revoltingly awkward home colon cancer test I undertook was negative. Otherwise, somebody would’ve called? Maybe not, health care is a provincial jurisdiction. Except for the funding.

The federal government’s solution to the CPC strike was a pause. A pause, not a resolution. A pause, like its concurrent GST consumer holiday. The postal strike will resume early next year. Another temporary reactive measure, akin to bailing a sinking ship with a milquetoast jug instead of flushing its ballast.

I imagine power is no easy thing to relinquish even if it costs you your common sense, ethics, integrity and marriage. The Globe reports Trudeau will spend the Christmas break pondering his future, fully aware half his caucus wants him gone, a majority of Canadians want him gone and that his government will fall when parliament reconvenes in the new year. Will he choose to lead the Liberals to slaughter on election day or decide to watch the carnage from the sidelines? While the machinery of the state can grind on without a functioning executive branch, the country, especially in times like these, cannot.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.