Diane Francis: Canadians voted for a bunch of hypocritical greenies and their naive, suicidal platforms
The election was disheartening: 65.6 per cent of the Canadian electorate voted for the Liberals, NDP, Greens the Bloc Québécois and their naive, suicidal platforms.
None proposed a viable job-creation or economic growth roadmap. They were all about taxing and spending. Ergo, nearly two-thirds of Canadians voted for free root canals or free daycare or free pharmaceuticals or free college. And 7.7 per cent voted for the Bloc, or to get more free stuff for Quebec. This is a nation that thinks like a bunch of trust fund kids, who despoil the environment more than our parents or grandparents did, and believe the world owes them a living.
The poster boy was Canada’s most prominent trust funder, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who flitted around in two fuel-guzzling aircraft during his election campaign while endlessly repeating the mantra “climate change.”
And nearly two-thirds fell for it. He and the Liberal climate-change cohorts — the NDP and Greens — claimed that Canada would lead the world in averting the impending ecological Armageddon by simply declaring war against its principle wealth-creation sectors, resources and auto manufacturing.
Even if one is sympathetic to the need to transition from the old to the new economy, there is not a single entrepreneur, technology maven, scientist, or innovator among the ranks of the tax-and-spenders to lead us to their Promised Land. Their culprit is oil and pipelines.
But if serious, their platforms should have taxed anyone occupying more than 500 square feet of living space, those who drive, fly and consume more goods and resources, as Canadians do, than do most of the world’s residents.
Instead, Canadians vote for leaders who promise to save the planet, but allow them to continue to commute long distances along asphalt highways, drive SUVs, fly south, drink water out of plastic bottles, are addicted to electronic devices that consume huge amounts of electricity, live and work in oversized and air conditioned premises, eat packaged foods, use paper cups and towels, and pack landfill sites with manufactured goods shipped halfway around the world only to be prematurely discarded.
The surging demand in monster houses, empty condos built in Canada for money laundering purposes, the dominance of SUVs, and mass immigration to high-consumption Canada from low consumption countries more than cancels out any environmental benefit from electric cars or renewables or Trudeau’s foolish carbon tax. The fact is that world and Canadian oil demand, like gasoline guzzlers and population, will be on the rise for years to come.
Voters who want to make a real impact should turn off all air conditioning, plug their leaky houses, stop having children, downsize, sell their vehicles, walk and use public transport, and lower their thermostats and wear sweaters.
Instead, they vote for a privileged prime minister who claims Canadians voted for climate change concerns and campaigns with two jets and others who don’t walk the talk. Real environmentalists would have video-conferenced their campaigns, and distributed their propaganda by email, not through paper posters, billboards and pamphlets.
Their hypocrisy was unchallenged by a mostly biased press because the green brigade has captured Canada’s public-policy space. The greenies run without policies to dramatically reduce demand for resources, and run without concern about creating jobs, exports or economic growth.
They scapegoat Alberta and Saskatchewan, as if oil supply is the problem, not demand. And Canada’s hypocrites lapped it up and spat out support for four thoroughly unworthy parties.
But there is one climate change the minority Liberal government will create if it fails to lift restrictions on resources and the TMX pipeline. Winter will come … for Canada as a united, prosperous nation.
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