Assessing the character of our PM

In the lead-up to the election in the United States, Joe Biden declared that, “What is on the ballot is the character of the country.” He was targeting President Donald Trump’s alleged personality flaws, including his inability to convincingly project empathy, which people thirst for from a leader during national emergencies, such as this pandemic.

Character relates to mental and moral qualities, which can be discerned from the values people espouse and the actions they take. It should also be relevant to the Canadian election, which will take place whenever NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh can no longer bear the humiliation of propping up a scandal-ridden minority government. So how does Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fare?

Not well. Start with his numerous moral lapses, including two findings of ethical breaches and a third likely to come (a first for any Canadian prime minister), at least three instances of him appearing in blackface, an alleged groping incident, the eviction of strong female cabinet ministers from caucus on an issue of principle, the continued avoidance of parliamentary accountability for the biggest spending program in Canadian history and a weak-kneed defence of free speech.

But wait … there’s more. Trudeau cynically threatened an election during a pandemic just to conceal damning details about the WE Charity scandal that he is desperate to hide from the public.

His unconvincing narrative — that the public service was solely responsible for originating and advocating for a $900-million sole-sourced WE student grant program — is fabricated nonsense. Are we really to believe the public service acted without any nudging from cabinet, the Prime Minister’s Office or the prime minister himself, who was a besty of the Kielburger brothers and whose family members received nearly $300,000 from WE?

Implausibly, the public service concluded, on its own, that only WE could execute the cash giveaway, in spite of the 220,000 bureaucrats who were available to do the government’s bidding. In an uncharacteristic dereliction of duty (unless it was a done deal), this conclusion was reached with no due diligence of the charity and therefore failed to uncover WE’s abrupt replacement of most of its board members, its breach of bank covenants and its Byzantine financial dealings.

Curiously, the civil service magically became capable a few weeks later. Curious also that very soon after the collapse of what smelled like a bailout from its political buddies, the erstwhile indispensable WE Charity withdrew completely from Canada. Well, not completely. Its for-profit “social enterprise” arm, ME to We, is surviving, if not thriving. Who knows, but forensic accounting of the serpentine organization could be a fascinating reveal.

Liberals portray the opposition’s attention to this issue as an unconscionable partisan diversion from the important business of spending more money to fight COVID-19 and hasten an economic recovery. It is apparently hard for some people to chew gum and walk at the same time, especially if it would chew up the government’s tattered reputation.

So how are we to understand Trudeau’s serial misbehaviour, aside from his ability, so far, to get away with it? The explanation comes from his personal character, the mindset of the Liberal party and an intellectual movement that captured progressive thinking worldwide.

Justin Trudeau established his persona as a virtue-signalling, playacting social warrior who generously apologizes for the mistakes of others, but almost never for his own. He wants what he wants when he wants it and gives short shrift to parliamentary tradition when it stands in the way of his personal needs. He will, without hesitation, prioritize his personal interests over anyone he can steamroll.

This profile fits well with a Liberal party that has long harboured the profound self-entitlement of being Canada’s natural governing party. Accusations of wrongdoing are dismissed as inaccurate, vindictive or aimed at technical breaches with no substantive significance.

Then there is the ideological underpinning. In The Closing of the American Mind, philosopher Allan Bloom lamented back in 1987 that, “There is only one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”

That belief now permeates 21st-century progressive thinking, including Liberal politics. Relativism is a precondition of being open to diverse versions of reality, both present and past. However, that openness does not extend to opinions that challenge the fundamentals of postmodernism, sacrosanct woke ideas or partisan interests.

Consequently, conservatism is deemed unworthy of respect for its flawed relative version of reality. Any attempt to advance its interests or weaken Liberal power must be resisted at all costs. The overarching righteous end justifies the means, in this case covering up a tawdry scandal that risks exposing the vestiges of Justin Trudeau’s compromised character.

HE WILL, WITHOUT HESITATION, PRIORITIZE HIS PERSONAL INTERESTS OVER ANYONE HE CAN STEAMROLL.