Outremont MP joins federal cabinet
Outremont MP Rachel Bendayan has joined the federal cabinet in Friday’s shuffle as official languages minister and associate minister of public safety. TVA asks who she is.
There’s a lot of federal drama Friday with the cabinet shuffle and with Jagmeet Singh threatening to bring down the government.
Can someone explain to me in words of one syllable what Justin Trudeau has, or has not done that has made it so clear to so many that he’s an awful prime minister? I’ve found him somewhat lacklustre, but still infinitely preferable to PP, and let’s not kid ourselves that Singh is a viable third option. Yes, Trudeau disappointed us when he broke his promise on electoral reform, but is there some other massive issue I’m not seeing?
This really feels in some ways like Donald Trump has succeeded in fucking with this country even before getting sworn in this time.
MarcG 13:23 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
As someone who doesn’t follow federal politics closely I have the same question.
jeather 13:23 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
What has he done that makes him good? I agree with you that he’s preferable to PP and Singh is never going to be elected (and though I like his politics best, I don’t particularly like him as a leader for the NDP), but “better than the alternatives” is not the same as “good PM”. (Many of the better results were part of agreements with the NDP, who for some reason allowed the Liberals to take all the credit for everything.)
Kate 13:34 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
He steered the country through Covid without crashing the economy, he kept the peace with Trump I, and he also managed to keep the peace with that “freedom” convoy in Ottawa. I think his virtues are mostly negative ones. You could psychoanalyze him in contrast him with his father, but Canada isn’t a country that longs for a showman PM.
walkerp 13:51 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
I’m not a fan of Trudeau and have many issues with his leadership and the Liberal party, but from a more centrist perspective, the main thing I can see is that polls started being bad, the Conservatives * Russia pushed a massive propaganda campaign and the national media parroted it. And then the Liberal MPs, being craven cowards all started abandoning ship. Feels very much like a wag the dog situation.
That being said, these all could just be symptoms of the traditional end of any party that stays in power for too long. Usually, the Liberals go out with some big scandal, but they dodged a few already early on.
Big picture, a Conservative government right now may be the best thing for the Liberals,because they are going to fuck things up so bad, especially with Trump in power.
walkerp 13:56 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
I forgot to add that unfortunately the Conservatives in power will be very bad for the rest of us.
Taylor 13:59 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
The problem isn’t what Trudeau has or hasn’t done, it’s that newsmedia revenue is driven by rage clicks, and all major media has now discovered that some variation of ‘Trudeau has got to go’ boosts traffic.
It’s nothing more than that.
There was a segment of the political right that wasn’t happy he got elected in 2015 simply because they’re never happy unless they have full power. Trudeau is everything they hate for any number of unimportant reasons – they simply want to be in power and will hate anyone who isn’t their guy. They’ve kept the pressure on for 9 years, knowing that if you keep re-articulating this mantra that he’s bad and everything he does is bad, eventually that’s the dominant and inescapable narrative.
They own Postmedia, they own polling companies, they own libertarian ‘think tanks’, they own the talking heads who show up on the other channels/papers/stations.
The greatest lie in Canadian politics? That Canadian media has a liberal bias. It’s the exact opposite.
The conservatives and their media partners first tapped into the anti-Trudeau rage that was driven by the oil and gas sector, that saw his meagre environmental efforts as an attack on personal liberty. The narrative was that Trudeau was beholden to foreign funded radicals. This was just a minor adjustment of previous CPC talking points. Canadian media discovers stories of ‘foreign interference’ in Canada’s ‘Davidian’ oil and gas sector hit a nerve. Danielle Smith literally builds a career out of this, first in print, then in radio.
Then Covid happened, and any attempt to fix that problem was an attack on personal freedom too. Canadian media discovers that any coverage of the anti-vaxx community is good for business. Though they had an ethical responsibility to keep people informed on just the facts, they open the doors to ‘let’s present both sides’, and most of that is just gawking at the Trucker Convoy on that crazy Queen of Canada lady. Who cares what the medium is, the message is clear: freak shows drive clicks. People arguing about freak shows drive clicks. “Canada’s having it’s own January 6th?” (which isn’t true at all – it was a noisy joke of an insurrection) – great, let’s wall to wall the coverage.
And so on and so forth.
A variation on Geroge Costanza’s infamous adage (It’s not a lie if you believe it)… it’s not a lie if you repeat it. The guy who tapped into this is Poilievre, who realized that if he just kept saying “Trudeau has got to go” – literally without offering anything else – it would gain traction because media would report it. Poilievre already knew he had the nation’s largest newspaper chain, several alt fact far right propaganda sites, 9 out 10 talk show radio hosts (etc) all in his back pocket. The real coup d’etat was getting the self-styled ‘sober second thought’ types at the Star and the Globe and Mail and CBC & CTV’s political panel shows to get on board – and here, the brilliance of it all, is that Poilievre doesn’t have to convince them he’s the guy for the job, just that the ‘Trudeau has got to go’ narrative pulls in viewers/clicks from across the political spectrum.
And where are the progressives? They were pushed out long ago, and now have their own small media ecosystem that carries on the hard work of policy analysis, feature reporting, and criticism, all the stuff that doesn’t draw in nearly enough clicks for legacy media.
That’s why you’re hardpressed to find a careful, considerate analysis of Trudeau’s policies and whether they’ve been good or bad. Not even the Star, a formerly ‘liberal’ newspaper, will do that.
It’s abundantly clear to the people running Canadian media (and shaping public opinion) that PP will be terrible, potentially fatal. They don’t care, they’ll simply farm the rage bait Poilievre produces, until those fields turn fallow. They’ll do this despite the fact that it will result in losing the audience that previously paid for coverage, because they misjudge social media metrics for paying customers. It’s no different than the DNC running centre-right candidates despite their left-leaning voter base (and the inevitable ‘surpriose’ they get when they lose the election – they’re reading data rather than listening to people).
At the end of the day, the fourth estate is crippled, right wing populists govern despite their own incompetence, democratic government undermines itself, and the wealthy amass greater and greater fortunes until one day the dam bursts in popular revolution.
Allons enfant de la patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L’étendard sanglant est levé…
Nicholas 14:03 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
Without espousing a position one way or another: Price go up. House costs. Gifts for friends. In it for him. Axe the tax. Nine years. No more ideas.
If you look at polls, the strongest Liberal part of the country is Montreal Island, and in some projections they’d have more seats on the island than in the rest of the country combined. It’s the same reason why Montrealers don’t understand why anyone would vote for the CAQ, because no one would say they would here (most honestly): we live in a bubble.
JaneyB 14:03 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
The debt issue is irritating to the more centrist and right-wing Liberals. He’s been fairly spendy, beyond the covid crisis needs. Also the immigration rate of 1.6 million per year (immigrants, visa student to permanent resident stream, refugees, and asylum seekers) instead of the usual 200,000 people is killing him, just kil-ling the Liberals. That created huge stresses on health care, and housing especially. Changes to capital gains taxes will be a large problem even for the middle and upper-middle class. Finally, the identity politics veneer rings shallow and insular to most people over 40. These are very significant liabilities and touch much of the population.
Notable successes: water to Indigenous communities – 90% complete to date, the Kinder Morgan pipeline is facilitating export of oil to China, cannabis policy.
Not a fan of PP but JT has been doubling down on these policies for a number of years now despite lots of opposition on the street and lots of media coverage. That’s not a good look. I don’t know how he will fix this. I’m not even sure a change in leadership would help at this point.
walkerp 15:27 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
JanyB, I generally agree with your overall assessment (though in normal media times, none of those would be such deal killers), except the capital gains tax. That is another massive Conservative propaganda line. It has an almost negligible impact on anybody but the very wealthy. It’s another example of how the people who actually benefit from the increased government revenue of the slight change in taxing policy somehow think it will hurt them and that it forced business to close, etc. Just classic conservative propaganda and media manipulation.
Kevin 15:48 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
People who spend too much time on social media are really angry and think they’re worse off than they were before the pandemic, and there is a whole ‘manosphere’ that is based on idiotic rage-farming and simpleton explanations that have no basis in reality.
This gets compounded with people who have actually done a decent job at policy being unable/unwilling to defend or explain what they’ve done in ways that make sense to people who don’t follow politics. And the average person has no idea what living conditions are like anywhere outside of their immediate neighbourhood, let alone in other countries. (It’s like terrorist groups overseas thinking all Americans live like they’re in a Hollywood sitcom.)
Meanwhile 30 years of lousy housing policy hit home during the pandemic as young people realized those one-bedroom apartments they’ve been living in really suck during the WFH era.
Mix in a decade of Trudeau et al preferring talk to action (or as some wags prefer, the announcement of the plan is the plan) and people are ready for a change.
The only shining light is that the majority of Canadians hate every possible next leader. Trudeau is down by 40 percentage points in the disapprove/approve polling by Angus Reid, while PP is down by 18 and Singh is down by 16.
walkerp 16:02 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
Why are we all so down on Jagmeet Singh? He maneuvered a weak position into massive dental coverage and the foundation for national pharmacy coverage and daycare, basically forcing the Liberals to do what they promised.
jeather 16:07 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
And the vast majority of people seem to be unaware that the NDP was even slightly involved with those. He didn’t do anything to get the credit he deserved, so people don’t realise how important the NDP is to those results. (I also didn’t like him during the leadership race; I found he trended neoliberal and I dislike income cutoffs that he is for. But I prefer him to the other two.)
Kate 18:31 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
walkerp, I’m not down on Singh, but he’s never going to be a serious challenger. He’s got the most power he ever will right now, with his hand about to pull the plug of the Liberal government.
Tim S. 18:38 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
Let’s talk about how Trudeau’s government handled COVID in areas of Federal jurisdiction for a minute. My daughter’s school closed Friday, March 13 2020. It wasn’t until March 18 that a travel ban was put into place (https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/trnsprnc/brfng-mtrls/prlmntry-bndrs/20210907/05-en.aspx). In the meantime the city of Montreal was sending its own municipal health inspectors to Trudeau airport for screening. So: for 6 days Montreal kids couldn’t go to school, but travelling to Canada from Wuhan or other affected areas was OK. Almost 5 years later, this still astonishes me. However much virus came into Canada during that period, that’s on Trudeau (who kept insisting the risk was low even after his own wife caught it in London).
Then, the pandemic supports: the NDP is mostly responsible for pushing the Liberals to augment their measly initial offerings (https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/can-the-ndp-take-credit-for-improving-pandemic-benefits-1.5552602)
I’ll give them a pass on their over-buying of vaccines because I benefited, but I’ll just point out that taking away vaccines from developing countries is not usual Trudeau branding.
Then, as the vaccines came out, Trudeau noticed that the people who were most hesitant about vaccines were people who were at the other end of the political/cultural spectrum from him. So, in a country with pretty much the highest vaccine uptake in the Western world, instead of a unifying message he decided to play wedge politics and push policies that, even to my eyes, were pointless overreach for political purposes: for example, a vaccine mandate for federal workers, even the ones working from home. He figured with 85% of the population vaccinated, this would be an easy win for him. The result was the convoy: while I didn’t support them, don’t forget they were a direct reaction to Trudeau deciding to play wedge politics for his own political gain. And having deliberately antagonized them, he had no plan and literally ran away when the push back came.
I generally try not to blame governments for mistakes, in both directions, during a unique(ish) crisis. But Trudeau is now trying to take credit for “steering Canada through the crisis” when, at pretty much every point, his decision-making was abysmal and it was the provinces and cities that did most of the heavy lifting. It’s peak Trudeau to screw up so badly and then claim success assuming none of us have working memories.
So yeah, that’s one thing I have against the guy. Multiply this by many other issues and, yeah, I get the general mood.
Tim S. 18:44 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
Singh is never going to be a serious challenger only because people keep repeating that he’ll never be a serious challenger. There was nothing serious about Trudeau II except his inheritance.
DeWolf 19:16 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
My biggest problem with Trudeau is that he’s a smarmy dilettante who doesn’t really seem to know what he’s doing. When Gerry Butts resigned over the whole SNC-Lavalin thing, there was a pretty notable decline in Trudeau’s performance. He was essentially being puppet mastered by his advisor(s).
That said, in this era where perception trumps reality, it’s hard to really understand what is good and bad in Canada right now. It’s clearly very bad that there is an affordable housing crisis in every single part of the country. Unemployment is getting worse everywhere but Quebec, which is an unusual situation for us – usually it’s the other way around. But there’s also mass hysteria about immigration that seems like it’s entirely the product of media manipulation and cynical political posturing by the Conservatives. The amount of anti-Indian commentary online — and increasingly in real life — is pretty astonishing. As far as I can tell, the huge surge of temporary migrants in the past few years was mainly a product of the Trudeau being out to lunch, so to speak, but its negative impact has been vastly overstated. If anything the rapid population growth in the past two years has simply exposed the drastic underinvestment in basic infrastructure that has been happening across Canada since the 1990s.
So in short, I would be happy to see Trudeau go, but not if it means PP comes into power. Unfortunately the current political situation means we’re going to have an election very soon and with so many people off their tits because of immigration and culture war bullshit, the outcome looks bleak.
Tim 23:43 on 2024-12-20 Permalink
There is a lot of complaining about the big bad media in this thread, along with minimizing or excusing the nauseating grandstanding, corruption and flat out incompetence of the Liberal government. We are due for a change and Trudeau and company have nobody to blame but themselves. Their policy choices, inaction and “holier than thou” attitude have frankly made this too easy for PP.
walkerp 00:11 on 2024-12-21 Permalink
Both things are true. The media has abetted the Conservative/Russian propaganda strategy which was so effective Liberal MPs themselves bought into it. Trudeau and the Liberals also completely wasted a massive mandate to improve Canada by kowtowing to lobbyists, prioritizing elections over policy and just being inept, as you say.
dwgs 09:37 on 2024-12-21 Permalink
What DeWolf and Tim said compounded by the fact that he has been in power for getting close to ten years, which is beyond the best before date of pretty much any leader.
Kate 10:59 on 2024-12-21 Permalink
Hasn’t always been so.
dwgs 13:55 on 2024-12-21 Permalink
The exception that proves the rule. 🙂
JP 18:00 on 2024-12-21 Permalink
“But there’s also mass hysteria about immigration that seems like it’s entirely the product of media manipulation and cynical political posturing by the Conservatives.” Thanks DeWolf. To be honest, I found myself wondering if JaneyB, whose comments here I normally find sensible, had drunk the KoolAid, so to speak. While I’m not saying rates of immigration haven’t had any impact I do agree that the negative impact has been overstated. There’s also a way to speak about it that wouldn’t dehumanize people and foment racism but the discourse and tone around this topic has been/has become very racist in nature for sure.
Ian 18:45 on 2024-12-21 Permalink
L’il PP is a rage-farming, no-ideas, fascist-friendly career politician. Trudeau is a pretty puppet for the Liberal establishment that somehow convinced himself he’s a real boy. We deserve better than either. Singh won’t get in because there’s no way Quebec, nearly a quarter of the seats, will vote in a brown man in a turban. That said Singh has accomplished more by striking a deal with the Liberals to support their minority government than any other NDP government in a long, long time.
At this point Trudeau is pulling a Chretien “you can’t fire me” schtick and I don’t think the party is going to recover from it in time to save the election if if he steps down now.
MarcG 09:58 on 2024-12-22 Permalink
This is very enlightening thanks to everyone for contributing.
We talk a lot about legacy media companies being driven by rage clicks but I was just browsing books on Amazon and noticed that they are always recommending me Jordan Peterson and Ezra Levant books even though I don’t go near that trash, and the same goes for YouTube. “Don’t recommend topic/channel” as much as I like it always tries to lead me back to some dark rabbit hole full of incel conspiracy theories. And these are the same voices you hear crying that they’re being silenced. Profit motive has made an absolute mess of information technology and turned everyone’s brains to sludge.
Kate 15:17 on 2024-12-22 Permalink
Enshittification, in a word.
Chris 20:14 on 2024-12-22 Permalink
>explain to me in words of one syllable what Justin Trudeau has, or has not done that has made it so clear to so many that he’s an awful prime minister?
In addition to what others said, I’ll add (though in too many syllables I’m afraid): insufferable, hyperbolic, performative, empty, hypocritical, wokeism. Many of you will disagree, which is fine, but it’s an answer to the quoted question.
nau 10:58 on 2024-12-23 Permalink
Seems wrong that only Nicholas gave a response in words of one syllable, so: Peeps don’t like same face lies for years and years and years and years. Peeps want new face to tell the lies.
Whether we have a Liberal or a Con gov’t. depends on the whims of the portion of the electorate that will only vote for one of those parties. The funny thing about Chris’s list is that (with the exception of wokeism, which is just a marker for ideological tribalism) it also applies to PP. And the great thing about Tim’s description of the Liberal gov’t.’s “nauseating grandstanding, corruption and flat out incompetence” is that it could just as easily be applied to past Conservative gov’ts. at least as far back as Joe Clark’s (and no one’s giving it a pass on incompetence). Tim says “we are due for a change” but electing Cons to follow Libs is no change, just a new face on the same old lies.
As for why, starting in the summer of 2023, the Lib/Con swing voters started abandoning the Libs, perhaps it’s because the Lib/NDP deal meant that some actually progressive policies were being passed.