Trudeau Liberals are eating your lunch
and pretending they are helping you cope with the adversity they are creating
If you listen to any speech by Justin Trudeau, you will have trouble finding one where he is not reeking empathy and claiming to “have your back” in dealing with the raging rise in the cost of living or the risks posed by COVID during the pandemic, now fading into history. He is persuasive, comes across as sincere, and has an enormous following of Canadian progessives who rank him as the second coming of Christ.
So how can I be critical? Trudeau is one of Laurentian elites who comes from money and understands both money and power. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, here is a definition of the Laurentian elites.
More than anything, while he pretends he doesn’t understand monetary policy, it is clear Trudeau understands two things:
It is easier to control a population living in fear of some crisis, real or imagined, and,
Policies that seem to help people are easy to sell, even if they pillage the savings of the group being helped, as long as they are complex enough that ordinary folk don’t get it.
Crises
Trudeau’s regime has been fundamentally underpinned by his use of COVID and climate change as serious risks that only the federal government can effectively deal with, giving him the power to mandate vaccines, masks, travel restrictions, border closures, and decarbonization policies even if those policies are patently ineffective at their stated goals. As long as people believe the risk is real and the federal policy seems like a sincere attempt to deal with them, they will vote Liberal. Both of these “crises” are grounded in what Trudeau claims is “the science” and dissenting views are not tolerated. The so-called “science” is just not that clear.
Policies
With the population persuaded that vaccines, mask mandates, travel restrictions, border closures, the “arrive Canada” app, and booster shots are the necessary elements to defeat COVID, they accept the command and control Liberal regime as necessary and acceded to the loss of personal freedom in the name of public good. With the population persuaded that only through a reduction in atmospheric CO2 can Earth be save from calamity, they accede to draconian regulations that limit the growth of the energy industry, prohibit pipeline construction, and encourage the use of electric vehicles despite their cost.
It is hard to argue these policies were wrongly motivated if you buy the definition of the crises repeatedly promoted by the Liberal government. I don’t. Civilization has survived previous pandemics without vaccines and the climate change charade is inconsistent with the laws of physics.
In both cases, a deeper look is warranted. First, a bit of grade school economics for those who missed that course or were asleep in those classes. Inflation is a tax on the poor which transfers wealth from those who work for a living to those who hold assets, financial or real. Policies that create or accelerate inflation have the effect of taxing the poorest in society an increasing the wealth of the elites.
Inflation can be created simply enough - just increase the money supply faster than the real growth in the economy and those extra dollars chasing the same goods will bid up the prices. Increasing the money supply is also easy, just have the federal government spend at a rate faster than taxes are coming in and rely on the central bank to buy government bonds to fund the spending. The bond buying by the central bank has the collateral benefit to those who want higher inflation in that it drives interest rates lower and asset values higher. Governments overtly desire inflation since it allows them to depreciate the debt they have incurred in the name of “programs” and borrow more.
Outcomes
When Trudeau came to power in 2015, the average price of a Canadian house was about $400,000. Fast forward seven years and the same house now commands a $1 million price. If you owned a home in 2015 (as did most of the Laurentian elites) your wealth increased. If you did not, your dream of home ownership disappeared into the night likely never to return. If you owned publicly traded stocks in 2015, the TSX index was at about 13,000 and today it is close to 20,000, and your stocks rose by more than 50%. If you didn’t own a home or stocks, you fell behind. It should be coming clear that inflation benefited only those who owned real estate and stocks, which includes Trudeau and the Laurentian elites.
Climate change policy was a more subtle scam. First, it is patently clear that CO2 cannot cause global warming. Even if it could it is even clearer that total elimination of Canada’s tiny CO2 emissions would be insignficant in the global picture and more than offset by the rise in emissions in China for any 3-month period since Trudeau was elected. But climate policy gave the Trudeau Liberals power - the power to enact the Impact Assessment Act which pretty well assured that no major project in Canada would ever be approved unless it benefited the Liberals, and the inclusion of “gender equity” rules in that Act assured that any project could be refused based on subjective analysis. That power permitted the Liberals to constrain the output of Canada’s energy industry, contributing to a global energy shortage manifesting itself in very high prices for fossil fuels for which there is no practical alternative, and enact a “carbon tax” which is another way to fuel inflation. High fuel prices affect every element of manufacturing, distribution and transportation and - you guessed it - cause higher inflation, a desired result.
The last element of this Liberal theft of your livelihood and savings is the Liberal approach to corporate taxes. Corporations dont’ pay taxes, they collect them from you by passing them on in the price you pay for the goods and service they sell. Corporate tax is a stealth tax on the poorest in society, who spend most of their income just to survive, and effectively transfers wealth to the elites. Are you starting to see the pattern here?
During the malaise the Liberals have created for their own benefit, they have made certain that members of Parliament not only got to work from home and attend Parliament only when it was convenient, they raised the salaries of Parliamentarians substantially since 2015 which not only pays them more but also increases their inflation indexed pensions.
To keep popular support, the Liberals toss a few bones to the poor. A carbon tax refund, a slight boost to old age pensions, a GST holiday, a spiff for those buying EV’s, you name it and they have done it. These token benefits seem enough to feed the hungry mob of Liberal supporters who react like Pavlov’s dogs to the operant conditioning model Liberals use to retain popular support.
Liberal support amongst the lower income levels of Canada’s population remains high. Liberals were the party of choice among young people in cities, despite Liberal policies which damage this group more than most others. This is hard evidence that our youth are poorly educated in economics and are vulnerable to left-wing propaganda. According to Environics,
Canada is in trouble if its voting citizens don’t wake up to reality and vote Trudeau and his cabal out of office at the earliest opportunity. For the sake of my five adult children, that can’t come quickly enough for me.
I like this essay. It is another article of yours that is clear concise and accurate. I wish this were out in MSM. So many people need to read/hear you writings.
Thanks