OTTAWA —
If you rule out a microscopic organism, specifically that spiked ball of viral misery called COVID-19, picking the top Canadian newsmaker in 2020 is a helluva tough call.
But a politician? By contrast to the saints of health care, they’re not even close.
Having said that, it is with one thumb up and the other slightly pinching my nose that the obvious Canadian politician of the year is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
There are reasons why this is an unworthy pick. More about that later.
But Trudeau compressed a decade’s worth of federal government action into a single year – and it’s not even close to being finished.
It was so important at the time, but the challenge of resolving that dispute now seems almost quaint by contrast to the deadly arrival of COVID-19 later that same month.
In just 300 days, Trudeau and his cabinet have overseen the largest rollout of new programs and spending in peacetime history.
Trudeau quickly read the mood of an anxious public who needed to know his massive rescue mission would spit out billions of deficit dollars from a wide-open government vault.
The multi-layered rollout of direct individual payments, wage subsidies, rent relief and interest-free loans for struggling businesses kept the pump primed in a severely-sputtering economy.
And becoming the world’s biggest buyer of vaccines per capita, going far beyond what could ever be injected into Canadian arms, was a smart move as the surplus will be shared with poorer countries at the back of the line.
Trudeau is now giving a mea culpa in year-end interviews for not acting faster to procure medical masks and protective clothing in March. That’s a valid self-criticism.
And any pandemic post-mortem may show the spread might’ve been slowed if his government had raised the Canadian drawbridges against international arrivals a few weeks sooner.
But it was the figurehead stuff where Trudeau shone.
His daily briefings during the first wave were textbook crisis communications, mixing victim empathy with public health advice and hope for a post-pandemic future
He even gave an inadvertent lesson on slowing the spread to the world when Anonymotif’s ‘Speaking Moistly’ spoof of Trudeau’s gaffe became YouTube’s third-highest trending video of the year.
But there’s a nose-holding asterisk over any praise of Trudeau’s performance this year.
There are many who believe the WE charities scandal was overblown because it’s mostly forgotten now, but it offered disconcerting insight into the ethical shortcomings of this prime minister.
He couldn’t even see a problem when own spouse and mother were pocketing benefits from a WE charity receiving a sole-sourced contract worth almost a billion dollars. That suggests almost wilful blindness.
Three times Trudeau’s now been before the ethics commissioner for a spanking. And while the commissioner’s final report on the WE scandal has yet to be released, it seems likely to at least wrist-slap Trudeau’s behaviour.
Couple that with Trudeau’s shameless proroguing of Parliament to dodge the WE probe, his MP lapdogs obstructing committee work when it returned, his government’s general lack of transparency and an increasingly centralized power structure and the new Trudeau boss is pretty much the same as the old Harper boss.
And yet, that’s arguably politics as normal in severely abnormal times.
Trudeau in 2020 was a comforting face in a time of disorienting disaster who lectured the behaving-badly when provoked and is giving us a tunnel-light glimpse of a future without facemasks.
For displaying high-profile leadership in delivering massive relief in record time while ordering up far more vaccines than Canada will ever need, Justin Trudeau gets my one-thumb-up nod as this country’s best politician in a very miserable year.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
