SCOTT ANDERSON -- If India was Justin Trudeau's retreat from Moscow, and the Wilson-Raybould Affair his Waterloo, there is an important difference between Trudeau and Napoleon
At a recent Southern Interior Local Government Association (SILGA) Conference
in Penticton in April, I had the honour of listening to the keynote speaker, Joe Roberts, recount his transition from an
addict on Vancouver's skid row, to the CEO of a multi million-dollar company --
and ultimately founder of “The Push for Change Foundation,” which involved him
crossing Canada from east to west on foot pushing a shopping cart to bring
awareness to homelessness.
Using a PowerPoint presentation, he recounted
his 16-month trip through rain, hail, snow and smoke, and when he arrived at
the centerpiece frame he paused, clearly expecting a burst of applause. After a
moment's hesitation at the smattering of half-hearted clapping and tittering,
he laughed awkwardly and said, “well, that used to get quite a different
reaction, um...,” he paused, “...before.” And everyone laughed.
The frame in question? Joe being greeted on
Parliament Hill by Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada.
“Before” was a time left undefined,
but it takes no leap of imagination to conjure up halcyon visions of “sunny
ways” -- flowing locks, pretty socks, and endless selfies.
“Before” was a time of promises and
dreams and brave new worlds, where women would thrive, men would behave, and
all the world would stop and gape in awe because “Canada was back.”
Gone were the dark days of the dreaded
Stephen Harper, who boringly led us through a Great Global Recession we barely
felt, because now the good times were rolling, a new day was upon us, and all
wonderful things were possible, even probable. But many of us saw
something missing, being the cynics that we are.
Through the haze of virtue signalling we
perceived a lack of substance. I wrote
at some point in Trudeau's ascendancy:? Young, hip, sunny and pretty,
aflutter on the pages of Vogue and its European counterparts, Trudeau the
Younger promenades across the international stage, a princeling in a tailored
suit. Fashion is taking the western world by storm this season, and Trudeau
exemplifies our Antoinettian age of political whimsy.
All would be well if the world were but a cat-walk.
In fairness, Trudeau might still be in the
superstar stratosphere had he settled for cat-walking, but he made promises
too, as if he were a serious politician. He claimed to be a “feminist,”
he claimed to be the harbinger of open doors and sunny days, a new type of
politics, a guru of diversity, a saviour of the environment, a bringer of weed.
He was, in the “before,” something of a tabula rasa and therefore all
things to all people, but above all an emblem of hope, promise, and hip.
A veritable 21st century Canadian Napoleon
... and then, one day, “before” was gone.
Unlike Napoleon, who began with nothing and
gained an empire, (before losing it with a world-historical bang) Trudeau began
with his father's empire and lost it in a gradual progression of folly that
started almost as soon as he was elected.
It's received wisdom these days that the
Indian fiasco was the moment the Trudeau ascendancy ended, but it wasn't
really.
The India trip simply marked the moment a
heretofore fawning Canadian press – including even the CBC, itself
existentially dependent upon the Trudeau machine – could no longer choke back
its collective gorge and keep protecting him from his own actions. Especially
once the international press caught wind of it and exposed our Prime
Ministerial diplomatic slapstick to billions of people.
It's also customary to point at the
Wilson-Raybould affair as the final gasp of the Trudeau PMO -- but it
wasn't really. The regime was on faltering life support by the time
Wilson-Raybould failed for the last time to save the Prime Minister from
himself.
And that brings up another point. If India
was Trudeau's retreat from Moscow, and the Wilson-Raybould Affair his Waterloo,
there is an important difference between Trudeau and Napoleon.
Both lost, but Napoleon faced both the
Russian winter and Wellington ... Trudeau faced only himself.
Far from being the turning points they are
perceived to be today; the India trip and the Wilson-Raybould affair were
simply markers along a crumbling path of Trudeau's own making. Simply put,
Trudeau's downfall was an incremental fading of promise.
More about that next week in Part 2.
— Scott Anderson comments and analyzes from a
bluntly conservative point of view.
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