The coming shower

Canadian political leaders do have a tendency to outstay their welcome.

Think Conservative leader Brian Mulroney, who in 1993 finally faced the fact that he was too unpopular to win another election and decided to step aside, giving Kim Campbell a few months as Canada’s first (unelected) female Prime Minister before the federal election that had to be held wiped the Tories off the map. (That’s not quite true. After the election they were reduced from a majority government to two MPs. One was female – not Campbell – and one male, making them the first political party in Canada to achieve gender parity in the House of Commons.)

If Justin Trudeau had faced facts two years ago when it was becoming obvious that he had past his sell by date, it is possible that reasonably popular Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland might have replaced him and gone on to win the Liberals another election. Unfortunately he did not face facts then. And when it recently became clear that he planned to scapegoat her for the state to the economy, she refused to play along and announced her resignation from Cabinet. (She didn’t exactly mince her words in her resignation letter.)

Now that Trudeau has announced he is stepping down, there is no way Freeland is going to accept the Kim Campbell poisoned chalice and every reason to believe the Liberals will go down in flames later this year.

Which forces us to accept that the current Leader of the Opposition is almost certainly going to be Canada’s next Prime Minister. This is very bad news. The only good thing I have to say about this clown is that his name (which I will only use once), Pierre Poilievre, lends itself to an obvious nickname. Pee Pee is a populist prick. (Oh, look, more pee pee.)

It’s sometimes difficult to remember that once upon a time (back in Mulroney’s day) there was actually such a thing as the Progressive Conservative Party. That was then. As I’ve previously written, like the once semi-sane Republican Party south of the border, the lunatics took over the asylum.

There is nothing progressive about Pee Pee. I could give you a long list of why he would be a disaster for Canada, but I’ve just found an article that pretty much covers it, so offer it to you instead.

Back in 2015, when it looked like the most Trudeau could hope for out of the coming election was forming a minority coalition government with the New Democratic Party, he made a lot of promises about introducing electoral reform. When he instead won a large majority, I wrote: “Justin Trudeau’s huge majority makes it exceedingly unlikely that he will keep his campaign promise to abolish first-past-the-post elections in Canada. (Some hubris in the making there.) That’s a shame, but if he actually keeps half the promises he made, Canada will be more civil and better off. If he can manage to undo half the damage Stephen Harper has done to Canada and its international reputation, he will have my thanks.”

I was right about electoral reform. So, it’s a bit galling that, when he was announcing his resignation yesterday, he had the nerve to cite failing to implement these changes as his one regret. Twat.

If he’d kept that promise, this country could be saved from the shower of Pee Pee coming our way. It is not too late – as a friend of mine pointed out to him recently in the first letter she’s ever written to a PM. Figure it out, Justin. The NDP and the Bloc would happily support you on this. Save us from the shower.