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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Justin Trudeau...with liberals like these who needs Conservatives?

Canada's newly elected supposedly "liberal" Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is apparently a big fan of the Keystone Pipeline and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.

However, Trudeau supports the Keystone XL pipeline—Canada's bid to find new markets for its vast carbon reserves in the Alberta tar sands—a position that puts the Liberal leader at odds with campaigners and with Barack Obama.

Trudeau has close ties to Keystone. David Gagnier, his campaign co-chair, was forced to step down last week after it emerged he had written a memo to TransCanada, the company building the pipeline, offering lobbying advice.

And this...

During the campaign, Trudeau came under attack by the Conservatives and the New Democrats for declining to make up his mind on the TPP.
The Liberals’ leader has criticized the secrecy surrounding the pact and said he would have to read the text of the agreement before making up his mind. His party, however, endorsed the TPP on principle when it was announced October 5, saying it “strongly supports free trade.”

Sounds like a "Hillary Clinton" type of liberal to me.
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6 comments:

  1. Marian RucciusOctober 21, 2015 at 9:49 AM

    All true, but you won't find Clinton promoting deficit spending as part of her economic platform, which Trudeau did.

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  2. mike normanOctober 21, 2015 at 10:04 AM

    Let's hope he follows through.

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  3. Marian RucciusOctober 21, 2015 at 12:07 PM

    Aye, there's the rub! Trudeau seems committed to doing so; the question has always been the reticence and influence of the right wing of the Liberal Party of Canada (aka the "business Liberals"); thankfully, that "old guard" discredited itself by its repeated losses to Harper and distaste for the grass roots of the party. A strong minority government might have been preferable to a majority. Nonetheless, I am hopeful.

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  4. NeilWOctober 21, 2015 at 12:24 PM

    Canada has been doing 'investment' since the recession. The balanced budget hysteria is more recent.

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  5. Marian RucciusOctober 21, 2015 at 12:51 PM

    I appreciate Neil Wilson's quotation marks around investment. In terms of business investment, according to Unifor (formerly the Canadian Autoworkers), which published a detailed review of the economic performance of the Harper government, Harper had the second worst record as PM of any since WWII. Unifors' review, co-authored by Jim Stanford and Jordan Brennan, concluded that Canada’s economy performed worse during Harper’s tenure than under any previous Prime Minister since the end of the Second World War. The full report included a detailed statistical database, with complete sources and methodology provided. Here is a link to the summary table (9th is the worst possible ranking, incidentally):
    http://www.progressive-economics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Worst-to-Worster.jpg

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  6. Marian RucciusOctober 21, 2015 at 12:53 PM

    Err, maybe 9th is second worst.

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