18 months into the mandate, we are well into the Trudeau Revolution. We should have sensed a bit of this with the Prime Minister’s public admiration of Chinese ‘democracy’ and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. There were little wee signs of it from the beginning, perhaps to put a gloss over it all – but we are now into a full blown revolution that will change the shape of Canada.
After years of Conservatives and Liberals watching money and working towards a balanced budget after the First Prime Minister Trudeau. The 2nd Prime Minister Trudeau is determined to take us down the road a second time. The Trudeau Revolution has blown up the bank, in 2019 after the full four years of a Trudeau mandate 5 years of Trudeau budgets deficits will be $142B and the Federal Debt will be $755B. A debt of $1Trillion is in our sights and you might want to look away but when you look back it’s in the rear view mirror and it is approaching fast. While being handed a balanced budget in 2015, the Trudeau Revolution is now primed to have Canada having to work and wait for its next balanced budget until 2055.
But the Trudeau Revolution doesn’t stop at the dollar and the deficit.
The government has tried once to push a parliamentary procedure through, Motion 6 was introduced last May. Motion 6 was designed to limit opposition debate and let a Minister of the government determine when a debate would end. It was withdrawn following protests from opposition parties and the battering the government took during Question Period on the motion.
From the ashes of the withdrawn Motion 6 has come, from Government House Bardish Chagger, her ‘thoughts’ on the modernization of the Standing Orders of the House of Commons – the rules on which Parliament operates. Billed by the House Leader as a discussion paper and left at that for now it would have been fine. What made this document part of the revolution was the motion in the House Affairs Procedure Committee from Liberal MP Scott Simms to have the committee study the paper and come back with which recommendations on what to present to the House to implement.
At the heart of the issue is a government that wants to use its majority to push through procedural changes, when as a majority it has the power to get its legislation passed. With the changes to the Standing Orders, now the government wants to be able to do that, with less interference from the opposition parties.
This is not the first time in the short history of the Trudeau government this has happened. Remember Electoral reform? At first the Bloc Quebecois and Green Party’s would not be represented on the special committee on Electoral reform, then they were. Then the Electoral Reform report came out and because it didn’t reflect the view of the Liberal’s then Minister Monsef stated that the committee had not done “the heavy lifting’. Translated, it meant that the committee did not unanimously endorse a ranked ballot system. What the majority of the committee did endorse was a proportional system that was still to be determined. The Liberals scrapped electoral reform saying Canadians no longer had an appetite for changes in how we votes, many voters cast their ballots for the Trudeau Revolution because of electoral reform promises.
The government now has this to worry about. The House Affairs Committee has been filibustering since MP Simms introduced the motion to study and report back. The filibustering was one reason for the delay in the release of the Budget by Minister Morneau. Other points of order (which take precedent over everything in the House of Commons) were raised that caused further delay including the distribution of copies of the Budget to Liberal MPs before the Minister started reading his budget speech. Liberal MPs were seen taking and posting photos of the budget and the opposition filibustering in the house, things that are not allowed.
The filibustering in committee will continue on April 3rd when the House returns from a constituency.
To be transparent the changes in Standing Orders cover how MP vote in the House, to how committees work the more controversial of having a Prime Minister’s Question Period once a week (the other days he can sleep in) and eliminating Friday sittings of the House.
Beyond Standing Orders, the Trudeau Revolution will also include the recently announced legalization of Marijuana. How deep the revolution goes is yet to be seen, but it is clear that like his father Trudeau 2.0 means to leave a deep stamp on Canada for better or for worse.
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The Trudeau Revolution 18 months into the mandate, we are well into the Trudeau Revolution. We should have sensed a bit of this with the Prime Minister’s public admiration of Chinese ‘democracy’ and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
