According to Trudeau, immigration is too high, the government is a poor steward of public money, and the carbon tax is worsening affordability
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At a press appearance in Dartmouth, N.S., on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a quick dissertation on how immigration was out of control. Temporary immigration had “grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb,” he said, adding that it was driving up home prices, depressing wages and worsening access to health care.
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PM Trudeau says immigration to Canada has "grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb," adding that "temporary immigration has caused so much pressure in our communities," in relation to housing #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/3ASFufZKID
Unsaid is that it got that way thanks to the policies of Trudeau’s own government. Over the last nine years, the Liberals have repealed or relaxed a series of measures that were previously keeping temporary immigration in check.
But this is far from the first time that Trudeau has emerged as a public critic of policies for which he is technically responsible. Below, a cursory history of Trudeau denouncing himself.
He’s been saying immigration is too high for quite some time now
While Trudeau’s Dartmouth statements were among his most poignant criticisms of sky-high rates of temporary immigration, he’s been decrying the phenomenon ever since Christmas. In a series of year-end interviews, one of the main questions asked to the prime minister was why he was overseeing an unprecedented spike in immigration.
In every case, Trudeau agreed that immigration was too high and that someone should do something about it. “It’s the temporary immigrants that have spiked massively over the past couple of years that is putting so much pressure on the whole system,” he told a joint interview with CityNews and OMNI.
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He denounced his own office’s feting of an ex-Nazi
After a September incident in which the combined Canadian parliament gave a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka — a 99-year-old former member of a Waffen-SS unit in Ukraine — Trudeau’s initial stance was to blame the gaffe entirely on the neglect of House Speaker Anthony Rota. Rota had invited Hunka, and Trudeau said in the House of Commons that if he made it a point of vetting the guest list of every parliamentarian, it would be a “grievous attack” on the independence of MPs.
But months later, it would emerge that Trudeau’s office had been just as derelict as Rota in vetting its invitees. While Rota had invited Hunka to Parliament, it was the prime minister’s office that had invited the nonagenerian ex-Nazi to a reception later that day. As Hunka’s invitation read, “the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, is pleased to invite you to a special event.”
He acknowledged that the carbon tax could indeed make life unaffordable
From the beginning, whenever opponents criticized the carbon tax as a cash grab, the consistent answer from the Trudeau government was that any affordability concerns with the tax had been addressed via rebates. While Canadians would indeed be paying more for petroleum, it wasn’t a drain on household income since most Canadians would actually see a net benefit when their Canadian Carbon Rebate came due.
But last year, this whole argument was detonated when the Trudeau government made a public concession to the claim that carbon taxes actually were hammering the ability of Canadians to pay the bills. In October, a coalition of dissident Liberal MPs in Atlantic Canada began claiming that the carbon tax was making it difficult for constituents to afford groceries or heat their homes.
Trudeau didn’t respond by saying that the constituents would be fine once they received their rebates. Rather, he acceded to the dissidents claims on affordability by approving a carbon tax exemption on home heating oil.
He said that housing shouldn’t be Ottawa’s job
“I’ll be blunt … housing is not a primary federal responsibility,” Trudeau said at the August ribbon-cutting for an affordable housing complex in Hamilton, Ont. The statement is technically correct; much like health care or education, housing is generally governed at the provincial level.
But by denying federal responsibility for housing, Trudeau was contradicting nearly nine years of his party asserting that housing was indeed an issue over which they had jurisdiction. On the eve of Trudeau’s election as prime minister, one of the key pledges of the Liberal campaign platform was that they had “a plan to make housing more affordable for those who need it most — seniors, persons with disabilities, lower-income families, and Canadians working hard to join the middle class.”
He said procurement (particularly in regards to ArriveCAN) is a scandalous mess
The gist of the ArriveCAN scandal is that a relatively straightforward mobile app was allowed to become a $60 million boondoggle thanks to an unchecked process of freely handing out massive contracts to bidders who often did little to no work (and, in some cases, were simultaneously working government jobs).
It all happened within a Canadian Border Services Agency that was ultimately answerable to Trudeau and his cabinet. But in March, Trudeau weighed in on the scandal by saying that the “government” needs to get its affairs in order.
“Government needs to make sure that everyone from the political level to the public service level are responsible, transparent stewards of the public money,” Trudeau said, adding “what we’ve seen in terms of the procurement process that’s ongoing within government: there needs to be significant changes.”
The launch of a Freedom Convoy-style protest in order to oppose the carbon tax appears to be off to an ignominious start. On April 2, an Alberta protest convoy moving through the Crowsnest Pass caused what the RCMP subsequently described as a “multi-vehicle collision.” The responsible party was apparently “five large farm tractors” who “refused to stop for police when a traffic stop was attempted.” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith – who is obviously no fan of the carbon tax – urged demonstrators not to block traffic, saying it puts them in league with Extinction Rebellion types who “glue themselves to the street.” Starting on Monday, Canada saw a scattering of convoys and attempted blockades by a group calling itself the Nationwide Protest Against Carbon Tax. According to what appears to be the group’s official website, they pledge to hold “interprovincial border strikes” until they can secure their goal of “immediate removal of the Carbon Tax, without replacement by any other form of taxation.”
Even after decades without the Government of Canada having hanged anybody, the death penalty is one of those policies that can usually be expected to attract majority support in polls. Regardless, a new Research Co. poll stands out for just how many Canadians it found that like the idea of killing criminals. The survey found that 57 per cent of Canadians favoured bringing back the death penalty for homicide, against just 35 per cent who opposed the idea. As to why, it probably helps that recent months have yielded a number of public scandals regarding the relatively lax treatment afforded to heinous criminals such as Paul Bernardo or Luka Magnotta. And indeed, the Research Co. poll found that Canadians’ desire to execute murderers largely dissipated if they were merely given the option of locking up offenders for life. If given the choice between death or “life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” only 35 per cent still supported executions against 55 per cent who were fine with permanent imprisonment.
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