National Post (National Edition)
Rex Murphy,
‘This generation, generation WE, is the one that will disrupt the status quo and shake the foundations of patriarchy”: Keynote speaker at 2017 WE Day UN.
We haven’t got a House of Commons.
We cannot get a financial update.
Our Cottage Life prime minister, all on his every-morning lonesome, has for the past 50 days or so opened the fire hose on public spending, setting off a Niagara-level flow of billions upon billions of dollars.
In the words of Winston Churchill, or someone who sounds a lot like him: Never has so much loot been thrown out the window by so few to so many.
Bill Morneau, nominally the minister of finance, didn’t even show up under the Tent of Commons while Mr. Trudeau shovelled out the billions.
Canada’s auditor general, definitely the most overworked, under-resourced human being in all of Canada, cannot even begin to keep up with the spending, never mind do a proper accounting of it.
The A-G has asked for more resources and a larger budget. Both were refused. His office may be the only major institution in Canada Trudeau has not drowned in grants, or giveaways, or subsidies.
Last week, the Cottage Life government pulled out all the stops. Trudeau announced $900 million for what he called a student-aid program. The government has said the money will go towards students’ fall tuitions, although the minister of diversity and inclusion has said the Canada Student Service Grants “can be used for any expenses.”
The big part of the announcement however was the further revelation that this close-to-a-billiondollar program will be administered, not by the loyal and dutiful members of Canada’s civil services with its thousands of members, but by WE Charity, one of the many arms of the Craig and Marc Kielburger organization, perhaps best known for its razzmatazz “WE Day” broadcasts.
Trudeau has been a prime speaker at WE Day. Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the PM’s wife, has also. In fact, in a point of sad irony, it was during a WE Day gathering in London, England, which she attended along with Margaret Trudeau, the PM’s mother, that she contracted COVID-19.
WE Days, and they have many, have the air of the old religious revivalist meetings, only with progressive dogmas in place of old school fundamentalism. And they are only for the young.
ME to WE is their slogan. After last week, for the Kielburgers, it may be WE to WHEE.
A private, non-governmental organization has been handed the right to pass out $900 million, to young people who “volunteer.”
This is historical. For up until Thursday, through all of time, the key definition of “volunteer” was someone who did good deeds for the sake of the deeds, and declined any form of compensation.
Trudeau has inaugurated a new vision for volunteers. Volunteer and we (WE) will pay you. Gone is that stuffy, fusty, so-un-2015 notion of serving the public out of civic good will and social conscience.
The WE bunch are all about youth and every progressive and hyper-liberal (small L) piety you can imagine.
They are as green as the greens. They are more feminist than Mr. Trudeau. They are — see above — going to “shake the foundations of the patriarchy.” WE’s leaders are two men. Should I mention they are white? That seems obligatory these days.
They are against everything bad, and for everything that is good. Which aligns very much with the Trudeau Liberal party’s view of itself.
Some might see Trudeau’s past patronage and attendance at WE Days as perhaps showing too close an alignment for him, might see his passing over of such a fat and vague program to the WE boys as unseemly. When it is noted that his wife is very close to WE, and that Margaret Trudeau has also graced their platforms, this impression grows even stronger.
There is also the uncomfortable consideration that, once again, the auditor general — the most overworked human being in all of Canada — will not have the capacity, now or later, to look into, scrutinize and assess the distribution of $900 million of Canadian taxpayers’ money.
Trudeau says he didn’t pick the Kielburgers. He says the civil service did. How do we know? How likely is that? Can we see the memo? Was anyone else asked? Have the Kielburgers ever contributed to Liberal campaigns, to the prime minister in his campaigns? Are we allowed to ask?
Some people are calling this a blatant conflict of interest. It isn’t. It is a blatant consonance of interests. Trudeau’s strongest appeal is to young people. WE Charity and its many arms deal exclusively with young people and promote an agenda that could serve as a Trudeau Liberal party platform.
Finally, Parliament is dead. Public spending is now an arbitrary function of the prime minister aided by the artful unelected advisers in the PMO.
This is sad. Sad for Canadian democracy. Sad for the next generation who will be paying for deficits when they are as old (but not as useless) as me.
Happy Canada Day.
PS. Halifax’s Chronicle Herald and St. John’s Telegram should be ashamed of themselves for their top-of-the-page cringeworthy, woke, “note to readers” on the Canadian flag in their weekend papers.
TRUDEAU HAS INAUGURATED
A NEW VISION FOR VOLUNTEERS.