Justin’s Liberals flew into Parliament with a majority over a rainbow on a unicorn of sunshine and Froot Loops, promising “real change”, but it seems that the honeymoon with the Canadian people might come to an end. The Liberals are at it again: much as the Chrétien Liberals lied about re-negotiating the NAFTA in 1993, it turns out that beneath Justin’s “real change” rhetoric is a thick fatty layer of Tory-lite establishmentarianism.
The first year of Justin’s government consisted of plenty of Pride Parade selfies and high-five snubs by royal three-year olds, but very little Parliamentary activity, with the exception of elbowing female MPs and the subsequent profuse apologies.
In fact, the first nine months of Trudeau’s mandate have been the least productive in decades, according to the Huffington Post’s article and data from the Library of Parliament, passing 10 bills in the first nine months of government. By contrast, even the Harper Conservatives managed to pass 18 bills in the first nine months of their 2011 mandate.
According to the non-partisan government accountability website trudeaumetre.ca, Justin has already broken 26 promises, meaning that he’s broken twice as many promises as bills passed. The broken promises include his promise of keeping the deficit under $10 billion (it’s triple that), two promises on veteran’s education funding, and cutting corporate taxes from 11% to 9% for small businesses.
However, the most serious broken promises have been against the Indigenous Peoples and the environment.
In 2015, Justin’s Liberals promised to grant First Nations communities a veto over resource development projects and called on Stephen Harper to stop muzzling scientists. It turns out that instead of muzzling them, Justin’s Liberals have a different strategy for dealing with pesky Aboriginals and scientists who go contrary to their agenda: simply ignore them.
The Liberals government sided with the Malaysian government over the pleas of many first nations and 90 scientists and climate experts when they approved the controversial Pacific Northwest Liquefied Natural Gas project.
“Providing a green light for this project at this time will only lead to protracted litigation which benefits no one. We urge the government to show leadership now by including our communities in full and meaningful consultations,” said the Skeena Corridor First Nations, whose land the pipeline centers around.
In a letter to Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, 90 scientists strongly opposed the project. “[Pacific Northwest Liquefied Natural Gas] would be one of the single largest point source emitters in Canada,” wrote the scientists. “This would make it virtually impossible for BC to meet it’s [greenhouse gas] emission reduction targets, and would undermine Canada’s international climate change commitments.”
It was already found that the Chrétien Liberals had no intention of keeping their promises made at Kyoto, so it should be no surprise that the Trudeau Liberals have no intention of keeping their promises made at Paris. The Liberals’ emissions targets are also the exact same targets set by Harper’s Conservatives. In addition, the Liberals broke their promise of ending fossil fuel subsidies for Stephen Harper’s friends in the fossil fuel industry.
So much for real change.
Image courtesy of the Boston Globe.
