So there’s good news and there’s bad news, when it comes to Canadian federal politics. On the good news side, Bill Morneau stepped down as the Finance Minister on Monday, and the next day, the first woman was appointed as his replacement, Chrystia Freeland.
As she told the media afterward, it was about time the glass ceiling was broken for this position, and she encouraged women across Canada to do the same, to keep working hard and breaking that ceiling.
Unfortunately for Canadians, that was the end of the good news, because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then prorogued Parliament, and the session ended, including the committee hearings investigating the WE scandal.
Parliament will come back on Wednesday, Sept. 23, when allegedly there will be a new Throne Speech with a new budget, and a vote of confidence in the Liberal minority government.
By taking this action to summarily dismiss the House of Commons at this time, Trudeau is breaking one of the promises he made in 2015, namely that he would never use a tool such as proroguing Parliament for political reasons. He criticized then-Conservative PM Stephen Harper for doing it, but then hypocritically he has done the exact same thing himself.
He claims that a new Throne Speech is needed now, because the previous one was made before the COVID-19 crisis hit in March.
This part is correct, however it hasn’t stopped the Liberals from racking up a huge deficit, with the debt projected to hit $1.2 trillion for the first time in Canadian history.
The fact is, by proroguing Parliament he stopped the committee work in its tracks, and this was purely a political move on his part, as the committee was investigating his government’s corrupt actions in regard to the WE charity.
The country is in the midst of a health and economic crisis like never before, with a pandemic that has impacted every aspect of life and has severely hurt Canada’s economy.
It will take years, decades even, to recover from this, as the pandemic is still in force and is still making its presence felt in part of life for every man, woman and child.
One pundit was heard to observe that this was Trudeau calling the Opposition’s bluff, and daring them to trigger a federal election right now. This would be the worst possible time to have a federal election — think of it, campaigning and voting during a pandemic for this, and for the provincial election coming up for Saskatchewan, and the municipal election right after. This is so much political game-playing, when what we need right now is real, honest leadership.
