Since 2015, Canada has suffered more indignities under a Liberal government than at any time in its 155 year history. I turned 18 in 1963 just as the voting age was lowered to 18 and first voted in the 1965 election which returned Lester B. Pearson as Prime Minister. For the next 50 years I voted Liberal in every general election, drawn to the Party by its emphasis on small government, personal freedoms, and a social safety net that balanced economic prosperity with a desire to protect the least fortunate in our society and ensure the elderly had reasonable pensions. Coming from a dirt poor family in the Ottawa Valley, I had first hand experience of poverty and saw a series of Liberal leaders as statesmen who made me proud to be a Canadian.
The Cold War followed World War II where Canada acquitted itself bravely, my father serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force as a Wireless Operator Air Gunner (WOP/AG) in Hudson’s and Anson’s and as part of a crew that sunk a German U-boat in the Mediteranean in 1943. Dad served throughout the war placing himself at risk in a role where only 6% of airmen survived one tour of duty, and he served five, logging over 800 combat hours. He returned to Canada with a War Bride, my mother who had been married to an Australian fighter pilot killed in action shortly after she gave birth to his son, my older brother Keith Heming. He moved to Avonmore, Ontario where he started a small dairy farm, close to our family farm in Moose Creek only a few miles away where the Blair family had lived since the early 1800’s. But in 1951, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce seized the farm when Dad missed one payment on a $3,000 loan.
Dairy farmers were primarily Liberal voters, and the Blair’s were no different. Dad rejoined the RCAF, not as an officer (he ended the war as a Flying Officer) but in the lowest rank of Aircraftsman Second Class (AC2) for a salary of $138 a month. By that time, he had three children including Keith. Dad was assigned to the Construction Maintenance Unit tasked with building out the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line of radar stations in Northern Canada and we moved frequently, living in Cultus Lake, B.C.; Calgary, Alberta; Chilliwack, B.C., and Winnipeg, Manitoba until I had finished grade 9 and Dad was posted to Metz, France.
There were many times in my early life when we had no food, and for many years we did not have indoor plumbing. I remember those trips to the outhouse in Winnipeg in 30 below weather not “warmly”. But my exposure to Western Canada had an impact. I met Canadians who were open, honest, hard-working, and tough as nails in an environment that was hostile by any measure. Oil men, miners, railroad workers, and many First Nations people and displaced Ukranians. By and large, they were small C conservatives with a smattering of Liberals and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation voters (CCF became the New Democratic Party in 1961) . Politics was never controversial and it mattered naught to me how others voted, but I kept voting Liberal almost as a family tradition. I was tempted to vote NDP when I heard speeches by Tommy Douglas, former Premier of Saskatchewan and leader of the NDP and was moved by his leadership in promoting Medicare. Too many of my relatives had died in childhood from diseases like Scarlet Fever and Diptheria and the Blair’s in Moose Creek and area could ill-afford medical care.
At some point, and I can’t nail down precisely when, the Liberal Party changed and became the party of big government, high taxes, and increasingly limits on personal freedom, always promoted for the “greater good” but the policies rarely produced any good and certainly limited freedoms. Every time Parliament met, more statutes were enacted that encroached on freedoms but did not advance society, in my opinion. Increasingly, the free market was being encroached upon by well-meaning but unproductive legislation like the Farm Products Agencies Act, R.S.O. 1985 c. F4 (FPAA) which formalized two pre-existing agencies - the Dairy Commission and the Farm Products Council of Canada. The Dairy Commission Act, R.S.O 1985 c. C-15 (DCA) controlled the dairy industry in Canada and was intended to ensure dairy farmers received a fair return on their labour but together with the Farm Products Council evolved into limits on the size of herds, dairy quotas, artificial prices. Ultimately, the value of a milk quota exceeded the value of the farm acreage and it made sense to sell the quota rather than produce milk on a small scale. Canadians were forced to pay higher than market prices for farm products at a cost of billions each year to consumers; a large bureau of highly paid civil servants was created; and, little benefit found its way to small family farmers. I started to see the rancid underbelly of Liberal ideology, but continued to vote Liberal hoping a leader would emerge that would bring back common sense.
The Blair family farm in Moose Creek stopped farming as a result of the stifling legislation but remained a residence for my grandparents until their deaths. I purchased the farm from my grandmother’s estate in 1988. It remains unfarmed, as are most of the adjoining farms in the area. Legislation intended to protect the dairy industry destroyed many small farms.
I saw the Liberal Party change under successive Prime Ministers. Lester Bowles Pearson was a great statesman and advanced Canada during his tenure. He was followed by Pierre Elliot Trudeau who shifted the Liberal Party towards bigger government, more government involvement in the economy, and an antipathy towards Western Canada that can only be described as jealousy at the richness Westerners enjoyed owing to the resources found in their provinces. Pierre Trudeau took advantage of the formation of OPEC in 1960 and its aftermath of higher oil prices to almost crisis proportions in the 1970’s to enact the National Energy Program (NEP) in 1980.
The NEP claimed that all Provinces should benefit from the oil & gas resources of the Western provinces and imposed strict price controls denying Alberta the benefit of world oil prices by legislating a “made in Canada” price. “The federal government's 1980 NEP had three main objectives: To boost Canadian ownership in the oil industry, to make the country a self-sufficient oil producer and to increase the federal share of energy revenue. The Feds introduced the NEP after deadlocked negotiations with Alberta and without consulting the oil industry. As part of the program, Trudeau launched a tax to fund the federal government's gas company Petro-Canada and gave grants to Canadian-owned oil companies.”1 Maurice Strong became the Chief Exective Officer of Petro-Canada in 1976, a state-owned oil company controlled by Ottawa. Strong came to Petro-Canada from a stint as the first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program, and with Pierre Trudeau was a member of the so-called “Club of Rome”.
Canada now had state ownership of a key player in a vital industry, an ominous sign of emerging authoritarian socialism. The Club of Rome in 1972 published a controversial paper called “Limits to Growth” claiming that calamity awaited Earth unless leaders acted to stem population growth, pollution and damage to the environment. Among other things, this was the beginning of “climate alarmism”. Ultimately, its members included George Soros, Bill Gates and Pierre Trudeau. Over time, it became obvious to many that Club of Rome “Elitists have created the myth of climate change to eliminate national sovereignty”. Current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau grew up in a household with a father convinced that a post-national world government was needed to “save the planet” and that government needed to embrace socialism.
When Justin Trudeau ran for election in 2015 I was inclined to support him until I heard his campaign speeches promising to curtail construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline (already approved by Cabinet), a vital step in achieving energy independence by shipping Western Canadian oil to Eastern markets and displacing oil from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and other mid-Eastern sources. His speeches had all the charisma and sex appeal of his father but lacked substance. I concluded his agenda was likely to damage our country, increase division between the Provinces and result in greater government intervention in the Canadian economy. I could not have been more right. For the first time in my life, I did not vote Liberal.
Canada has gone straight downhill in the 7 years since Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister. He filled his cabinet with left wing zealots who embraced his desire to create a post-national world government and use “climate change” as a rallying cry to achieve that goal. Former Minister of the Environment Christine Stewart whose tenure preceded Trudeau’s election said it all in a conversation with the editor of the Calgary Herald: “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony . . . climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world”. It was clear that the “climate crisis” was political rhetoric devoid of scientific underpinning not only from Stewart’s words but also from application of the laws of physics and chemistry which I was fortunate enough to learn while studying at Royal Military College of Canada. In a separate article, I estimated what amount of “warming” could possibly result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels accepting as a given the “climate sensitivity” models published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but applying the established laws of physics and chemistry. In short order, it was clear to me that the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) was wrong.
Under Justin Trudeau, the attack on energy begun by PierreTrudeau accelerated. Pipeline projects were quashed, the Impact Assessment Act was enacted putting permitting of major development projects in the hands of the Minister of Environment regardless of in what Province they were situated, and one environmental activist after another was made Minister of the Environment. Canada’s 165 billion barrels of oil remained largely undeveloped and the government income from taxes and royalties available from their development (enough to completely eliminate income and property taxes in Canada) stalled except for any benefit from rising prices.
Trudeau’s policies contributed to the emerging global energy crisis now in its infancy, with prices for natural gas in the United Kingdom for example hitting as much as $60 per thousand cubic feet. Oil prices are near US$100 a barrel and world oil inventory has shrunk by almost 600 million barrels. Combined with profligate government spending by Ottawa pushing Canada’s federal debt to over $1.4 trillion, inflation has been baked in for Canada and will over time impact the poorest Canadians more severely than most. This is Canada under Trudeau.
Notwithstanding the abject stupidity of the foregoing policies, Liberals continue to love Trudeau with his “net approval level” reported by Abacus Research as plus 67%.
In summary, Canadian Liberals have lost their minds.