Conquer Club

This morning, Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau's right hand, resigned.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/finance-minister-chrystia-freeland-resigns

Trudeau was facing a revolt in caucus last fall, but instead of making any real changes, he became more resolved than ever, circled the wagons around his inner cabinet, and carried on. Now, the most central player in that inner cabinet has called it quits.

This will be the second high-profile Finance Minister that has resigned after being unable to curb Trudeau's crazy spending habits. In 2020, economic celebrity Bill Morneau resigned after Trudeau blew his carefully-crafted budget out of the water. Now, Chrystia Freeland, who replaced Morneau, has done the same.

Rumours abound that Trudeau was planning to replace Freeland with an even more famous Finance Minister, Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and later governor of the Bank of England. Apparently, replacing famous Finance Ministers with more famous Finance Ministers is Trudeau's best idea for holding on to power. It doesn't seem to be working. He is mired in the polls a full ten points behind the Tories and has been for more than a year.

No matter how big the cranium on the Finance Minister is, they can't get blood from a stone. Trudeau's latest hare-brained scheme to recover his lost popularity was a nine-week GST holiday which started last Saturday. The holiday exempts some businesses from collecting GST from some products, but not all. It didn't even start or finish on some natural break point like a month-end, but started half-way through December (hint: for Christmas shoppers) and ends half-way through February (hint: for Valentine's dates), creating a massive accounting headache for the businesses concerned. Most businesses polled say the cost of accounting, switching tax rates half-way through the month, and then accounting for it all, will create far more in extra accounting and programming costs than what it will generate in extra sales.

At the end of the GST holiday, a special one-time cheque was to be mailed to all Canadians, at a cost of $4.68 billion. This was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back, and Freeland put her foot down. Starting last Thursday, Freeland's office began leaking that the cheque would never happen, at which point Trudeau decided to replace her. To add insult to injury, however, he insisted that she read the budget update to Parliament today as her idea, which seems to have triggered the resignation.

Housing Minister Sean Fraser had already announced his resignation. Oddsmakers are calling it 50/50 whether Trudeau will resign or keep retreating further into his bunker.

Honestly i seem like virtually every Canadian I talk to doesn't like Trudeau... what's kept him in office this long Duk? Is it the French Canadian voting block dynamic?

mookiemcgee wrote:Honestly i seem like virtually every Canadian I talk to doesn't like Trudeau... what's kept him in office this long Duk? Is it the French Canadian voting block dynamic?

No, he's not popular in Quebec at all.

It's mainly the women and gays. Like his father, he's fairly good looking, and he's kept his youthful looks well into middle age. A lot of women and gays have the hots for him, and he reinforces it constantly by addressing every feminist rally, marching in every gay parade. He's given millions if not billions to Equity programs, ruthlessly purged military officers who were even vaguely suspected of opposing women in the army, etcetera.

The Tories of course have their share of anti-abortion religious nuts, and that has really played into his hands, painting himself as the Defender of Women's Rights against the Tories.

Dukasaur wrote:

mookiemcgee wrote:Honestly i seem like virtually every Canadian I talk to doesn't like Trudeau... what's kept him in office this long Duk? Is it the French Canadian voting block dynamic?

No, he's not popular in Quebec at all.

It's mainly the women and gays. Like his father, he's fairly good looking, and he's kept his youthful looks well into middle age. A lot of women and gays have the hots for him, and he reinforces it constantly by addressing every feminist rally, marching in every gay parade. He's given millions if not billions to Equity programs, ruthlessly purged military officers who were even vaguely suspected of opposing women in the army, etcetera.

The Tories of course have their share of anti-abortion religious nuts, and that has really played into his hands, painting himself as the Defender of Women's Rights against the Tories.

Two points:

I had to look up what is GST: Goods and Service tax, a value added tax in Canada (a type of federal sales tax, it seems to me, not knowing a lot about such things).

Trudeau vs. Tories seems, superficially to me, the classic liberal vs. conservative position on several things. But to be honest, I do not keep up with Canadian politics much. So that may be a just a cursory look at Canadian politics.

Was any of this a reaction of the truckdriver protests? Freezing bank accounts and driving insurance.

"Banks were ordered to freeze personal and corporate bank accounts suspected of being used by people violating the regulations."

"Insurance coverage for trucks being used in blockades was suspended."

Both seemed like overreach.

Dukasaur wrote:This morning, Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau's right hand, resigned.

I have it on good authority that DDS' right hand has been trying to resign for years.

HitRed wrote:Was any of this a reaction of the truckdriver protests? Freezing bank accounts and driving insurance.

"Banks were ordered to freeze personal and corporate bank accounts suspected of being used by people violating the regulations."

"Insurance coverage for trucks being used in blockades was suspended."

Both seemed like overreach.

Yes, they were overreach.

However, they didn't really gain him any new enemies. Virtually everyone who may have opposed Trudeau based on his over-reaction to the trucker protest, was already opposed to him before. So I think the net cost of all that was minimal.

jusplay4fun wrote:I had to look up what is GST: Goods and Service tax, a value added tax in Canada (a type of federal sales tax, it seems to me, not knowing a lot about such things).

Based on the standard European-style VAT.

jusplay4fun wrote:Trudeau vs. Tories seems, superficially to me, the classic liberal vs. conservative position on several things. But to be honest, I do not keep up with Canadian politics much. So that may be a just a cursory look at Canadian politics.

Fairly close.

LOL @ Justin Trudeau on a jog yesterday ---

https://x.com/truckdriverpleb/status/18 ... 7612640767

Dukasaur wrote:

mookiemcgee wrote:Honestly i seem like virtually every Canadian I talk to doesn't like Trudeau... what's kept him in office this long Duk? Is it the French Canadian voting block dynamic?

No, he's not popular in Quebec at all.

It's mainly the women and gays. Like his father, he's fairly good looking, and he's kept his youthful looks well into middle age. A lot of women and gays have the hots for him, and he reinforces it constantly by addressing every feminist rally, marching in every gay parade. He's given millions if not billions to Equity programs, ruthlessly purged military officers who were even vaguely suspected of opposing women in the army, etcetera.

The Tories of course have their share of anti-abortion religious nuts, and that has really played into his hands, painting himself as the Defender of Women's Rights against the Tories.

Just as an addendum, I think the fact that the illusion has broken is a big part of why he's on his way out.

The "Fake Feminist" label is increasingly being used.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/chrystia-freeland-resignation-trudeau-gender-feminism-1.7413164

The "analysis" of this poll probably doesn't reflect reality but, if it's even close, the Liberals are headed for that 90s era wipeout when the Progressive Conservatives went from the governing party to simply ceasing to exist and Canada was a one-party state for a few years ---

Butts says Trudeau is out ...

A former chief adviser and close friend to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday he doesn’t think Trudeau will stay on to lead the Liberals in the next election.

His post came the same day the Conservatives said they will move to bring down the government as early as the end of January, by first moving a non-confidence motion in a House committee that will sit Jan. 7.

https://globalnews.ca/news/10935236/but ... departure/

CTV's analysis of results in an election in early 2025 are pretty dire ...

We love cartoons and half naked men as our signature.