As Liberal death rattles grow louder and the Trudeau regime totters, certain dismal realities about this country become ever more obvious.
Canada is being ruined not just by Liberal incompetence, weakness and economic folly, but also by their unrelenting centralism in this vast nation.
The Liberals have extended their powers in many areas without any growth in their ability to run the most basic services.
Nearly 200,000 people are waiting for passports. The strike at deeply challenged Canada Post has derailed Christmas and damaged small business.
The government blew open the doors to immigration, overloading housing supply all over the country.
Heralded national programs such as child care and dental care are unavailable to many people. The flashy holiday break on GST and HST is an expensive political dud.
The Liberals constantly expand federal power to dominate whole sectors of the economy, especially in resources.
They try to impose social goals on foreign investment, to the astonishment of outsiders. The dollar has fallen nearly six per cent against U.S. currency in the past year.
They write unconstitutional laws — i.e. the Impact Assessment Act — to assume economic powers not rightfully theirs.
They ban firearms but never get around to buying back guns. They lavish cash on their favourite economic sectors in Quebec and Ontario, while threatening the future of industries from Saskatchewan to B.C.
They are largely captive to the voters in three cities across a mammoth country — Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. In wide swaths of the rural and urban West, as well as rural and suburban Ontario and Quebec, the government now seems alien.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prizes performance above all else. Such leaders always leave a wreckage of expensive programs largely ignored after the spotlight switches off. The boondoggles live on, enriching consultants hired by well-paid bureaucrats.
All this would be horrible in normal times. With the Liberals deep in crisis after the resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and the Trump presidency looming, we have a true national emergency.
(You know this is deadly serious when Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, a separatist, says, “We have to stop fighting between ourselves. We have to try to present a more united front.”)
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s contempt for “Governor” Trudeau could not be more obvious.
The real work on that front is falling to the 13 premiers of the provinces and territories. They say they’re taking leadership with a “Team Canada” approach. They’ve met twice and put out communiques promising to work together.
Their group is the Council of the Federation, under the working title Canada’s Premiers. They’ve been meeting for years to sound off about irritants such as shortfalls in federal funding for health care.
The group always annoys centralists who don’t think premiers should meddle in national matters.
But today, they’re arguably more effective with the Americans than the federal government.
The premiers and their officials are lobbying vigorously in the U.S. against tariffs. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has emerged as a key national spokesperson, along with Ontario PC Premier Doug Ford, current chair of the group.
(Smith actually won a victory Tuesday in her battle over federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s absurd 2035 target for a net-zero Alberta electricity grid. The Liberals pushed the deadline to 2050.)
As a group, the premiers represent Canada far more accurately than the federal government does.
They include two Liberal provincial leaders, two New Democrats and a scattering of conservatives under various names. The territories send two non-partisan leaders and one Liberal.
Everybody at the table has an equal regional voice. You won’t find that in the federal Liberal caucus or cabinet.
Maybe the premiers’ group should be declared the formal national negotiator during this crisis, if only because they’d be far less likely to sell out one region.
At this point they’re our best hope — the voice of collective sanity.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald.
X: @DonBraid