Elder Advice

Thinking Inside the Box - 153

While he may have done it simply to prove Elder Advice’s prediction was wrong¹, it would be a delicious irony if Justin’s resignation as Prime Minister on Epiphany had resulted from a sudden, intuitive perception into the reality that he was unfit for the office of Prime Minister.

In the aftermath of Justin’s welcome- if only 9 years, 2 months and 22 days overdue - resignation as Prime Minister however, Elder Advice is obliged to pause his planning for the continuous opening of champagne bottles, the fireworks displays, street parties and outdancing his Tik Tok feed. And remind everyone that we are not rid of him yet. Absent some extraordinary event, Justin will linger until March, and who knows what further mischief he will get up to before then. Meanwhile, the endless, premature eulogizing by North American media these past two weeks has been aggravating, and the prospect of two more months of blather about his “legacy” is particularly galling. It’s like a funeral. Where they bury the corpse with spoons.

Meanwhile, not unlike the spoiled child who would rather break his own toys than let others play with them, Justin’s legendary self-regard and the long delayed exit it caused, leaves behind a party in freefall, a rudderless government and an idle Parliament in a time of national crisis.

Of course, this is all old news, overshadowed by Trump’s daily musings over destructive tariffs, his on again, off again invitations or threats to have Canada as the 51st state, and Justin’s ‘clarion call to stand up to American bullying by depriving them of our invaluable contribution to Florida’s orange juice revenue. Elder Advice could go on. And on.

So, where are we now? With the shameful prorogation of Parliament for illegitimate partisan purposes and the Governor General’s dereliction of duty in permitting it, we must now endure the spectacle of the Liberals’ desperate makeover plan - hoping to persuade us that the last nine years never happened by throwing up the most aptly named candidate in the party’s history:

car·ny /ˈkärnē/

noun (informal•North America)

a artful, sly person who works in a carnival or amusement show.

Regrettably, it is a plan which, given the notoriously short term memories of Canadian voters and middle of road Canadians’ distaste of Pollievre’s unnecessarily nasty, chronic complaining personae, may just work - again.

As for Freeland’s “I’m running to fight for Canada”, Elder Advice is going to embroider that on a pillow. As soon as the nausea subsides. After all, 43% of Canadians aged 18 to 34 who when asked by IPSOS pollsters this past week, actually responded that they would vote to join the United States if they received citizenship and the conversion of their assets to US dollars was guaranteed.

Elder Advice is, at once, utterly appalled and sadly unsurprised.

Appalled - that, in a few short years, Canada’s political caste has created a generation adrift: unmoored from the country and entirely self-absorbed.

Unsurprised - given that, for a decade, we have suffered a Prime Minister who, when not engaged in doling out from his bottomless sack of sorries, has been instructing Canadians that they are irredeemably racist, genocidal, colonial settlers in a “post-national” state, with no core identity. Or standing idle as Canada’s security and its armed forces decay, and the nation’s historical record and the contributions and statuary of its founders are vandalized. Or actively creating its new international reputation as an unreliable ally and a scold. Or implementing ill conceived economic policies to redistribute rather than create wealth and to perpetuate corporate welfare. And, until a few months ago, the entire federal Liberal establishment gave vocal and unstinting support to all of it. Including the former Finance Minister who now conveniently claims she opposes fundamental Liberal policies, such as the carbon and capital gains taxes for which she herself was responsible.

Elder Advice has often marvelled - never more than now - at the irony of allowing those in the inner circle of government to use the honorific: “The Honourable” - during and after their term in public office. Perhaps it is essential to keep alive the faint hope of persuading the rest of us that they are.

As for the federal election which cannot come soon enough, in 1877, Canada’s newly created Supreme Court heard a case involving a number parish priests charged under the Elections Act for preaching sermons threatening their parishioners with eternal damnation if they voted for candidates of the Liberal party. Elder Advice has a good mind to elist all those men of the cloth and put them back in the pulpits in 2025. If only Canadians still had the habit of attending Church. If only all those clerics did not suffer from the serious impairment of being dead.

It’s all enough to make Elder Advice think it is time to get away from it all for a spell. Somewhere remote. So remote that all this insanity could never reach it.

Greenland, perhaps.

1. Elder Advice 152