National Post (National Edition)
Singh condemns Liberals, yet supports them
“It is disgraceful the way Big Oil is gouging Canadians at the pumps.
“Gas prices are up and Big Oil CEOs are bragging about record profits.
“Liberals and Conservatives have rigged the system.
“When you pay more — their well-connected friends make more.”
It would have been a strange tweet at any time, but from a (effectively) co-prime minister it strove for the bizarre.
It was Jagmeet Singh who delivered this blistering volley, the one-time leader of the NDP and now parliamentary bodyguard to Justin Trudeau's Liberals.
Pay attention please to Line 3 above, the one charging that the Liberals and Conservatives have “rigged the system.”
Singh must realize that rigging oil prices is a criminal affair. So, is he charging that the party (L) that his party (NDP) has just guaranteed a three-year stay in power, is actually fixing oil prices in collusion with “Big Oil?” That is after all what the tweet says.
And is he also saying that Justin Trudeau, green to everything but his socks, is covertly, sinisterly fattening the bank accounts of “his well-connected friends?”
Well, Jagmeet if you mean these things why, oh why, are you in league with them? Why have you made your party their prop and support?
Do you not follow the logic of your own thoughts?
You have proof of this “rigging” Mr. Singh? Let us have it. This is not some flip comment during question period. It is a dark and deep accusation that the Liberals and the Conservatives and “Big Oil” have conspired to enrich themselves through the infliction of pain and punishment on the poor of Canada.
By the way, how do the Conservatives come into this? I thought they were in opposition, which offers no sway over policy. As opposed to your NDP, which has great sway over what the Liberals do.
Singh is either confused or lazily glib in his pronouncements. Or perhaps totally invulnerable to the damning ironies of condemning the Liberal party and its leader while offering himself and his party as their buttress, their shield, their scaffold and support. If the Liberals are “rigging” the system, they are giving the Liberals cover. Strange posture for the NDP.
As for “Big Oil,” just what is that? Something out of one of the lesser James Bond movies? SPECTRE of the oilsands?
Big Oil — running Canada? They can't even get permission to build a pipeline out of Alberta.
Will someone please tell Singh that other than in his rhetorical fantasies, Canada is not run by a cabal of oil “billionaires.” In reality it is run by a coalition of his NDP and Trudeau's Liberals. Singh, alas, is the man with the power — he holds the fate of a whole government in his hands. There is not an oil executive in the country with so much as a whisper of Jagmeet Singh's influence and power.
Tell him, too, that the cruel cost of gas at the pumps and heating oil for homes is the direct result of his and Trudeau's blind anti-Canadian-oil policies. Mr. Singh, the carbon tax and anti-oil policies of your brother Liberals are one of the main reason prices have risen to punishing heights.
You cannot shout about high gas prices, Mr. Singh. You made a deal that enabled them, a deal that endorsed the rationalization that making the poor in Canada pay more for essential energy will change — pause for laughter — the global atmosphere.
Supporting the Liberals means you are supporting having carbon taxes and raising them in a time of record inflation. You do know who this hurts most. The poor. The unemployed. Blue-collar workers. Anyone in economic distress. Precisely the set of citizens that in the days of David Lewis and Tommy Douglas and Jack Layton the NDP made it their business to protect, fight for, and represent. It's been a sad shift from “work to woke,” from being the only true challengers to the “natural governing power” to its obliging consort and always obliging handmaiden. (Ms. Atwood please forgive the appropriation of your sad red-hat heroines.)
Do you really wish to help these same poor people, Mr. Leader of what once was the workers' party? Drop the expedient coalition. Fight against the useless and injurious carbon tax. Lobby for a couple of pipelines. Talk to a few oil workers. Tend to the wants and needs of ordinary Canadian citizens.
Is it so uncomfortable to realize you were elected as a voice of opposition?
CANADA IS NOT RUN BY A CABAL OF OIL `BILLIONAIRES.'