Rex Murphy: The Liberals are so far out of touch it probably can’t be measured

The greatest and most characteristic failure of the Trudeau administration has been its war against the oil and gas industry. It was so-early signalled. There is, for example, this brilliant pat-on-his-own-back — a yoga twist Mr. Justin has perfectly mastered — from nine years ago:

“I am pleased to announce that we will keep our commitment to implement a moratorium on crude oil tanker shipping on British Columbia’s north coast.”

From out of that deep but callow mindset came the blocking of pipelines, the wretched, useless (and in this time of rampant inflation) insulting so-called “carbon taxes,” the supine genuflections to the international global warming extremists, the hobbling of a mighty natural resource, and latterly the incredible elevation of a one-time Greenpeace activist and tower-climber, Steven Guilbeault (name his other qualifications), to a ministry in a supposedly mature national government.

The second greatest failure is a corollary of the first, the disregard, perhaps reaching to contempt, for the interests of the Western provinces. It amounts to the prime minister establishing a two-tier Confederation.

I am very well aware that I have made this observation many times before, but that puts no halt on my restating it: If oil and gas were the principal industries of Ontario, or especially Quebec, a drawing of an oil pipeline, or better yet that of an oil barrel, would long ago have supplanted the maple leaf on the Canadian flag.

It amounts to the prime minister establishing a two-tier Confederation

How ever did global warming become the principal policy and obsession of the government of this vast, cold, main northern nation? If Canada were one of those tiny islands that shoot out warnings that they will be submerged in the apocalypse-to-come, it might be understandable.

The Maldives, for example, have staged their worry on this point. They held a televised “underwater cabinet meeting” to “raise awareness” of global warming. They gurgled very impressively, air bubbles drifting upwards, but, note, they still have land-based governance.

But Canada? Here’s a raw question too rarely asked — what’s our concern in all this? Why is global warming the principal and sternest policy of a Canadian government? Can we change China, India, Russia by our example? Beyond the burnishing of Trudeau’s credentials as the most self-advertised woke politician, what is it all about? Is Canada a heat furnace? Does Newfoundland threaten the global thermostat?

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With the Canadian press asking stern questions about “carbon emissions policy” and which party has the “best” one, will no one ask the essential question: What benefit to Canada flows from “carbon reduction” schemes? Why does the Canadian government embrace global warming as the principal theme of national governance? Most succinctly, will no one in the press gallery ask the prime minister this question: What does it matter what we do?

Are there not wells to clean, passport lineups to shorten, inflation to worry about, estrangement from the Confederation to address?

Next question: Why has an international agenda, supported by every liberal billionaire and dogmatist of the warming crusade, become the key, near genetic, policy of the Trudeau administration? As Hillary Clinton so famously asked, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Can no one in the national press ask why it is important, or in any way consequential, or has any impact on any other government in the world, that Trudeau taxes Canadian gasoline and heating fuel in the “fight against global warming?”

Are there not wells to clean, passport lineups to shorten?

Why his personal and shallow preoccupations, and those of his ideologically driven mentor, Gerald Butts, are shaping the destiny of our nation? Canada is not a footnote to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It may be fine for cabinet ministers flying abroad, a PM with his private air accommodation, and MPs with solid salaries not to care about pump prices or the jump in food costs and mortgage payments, to ignore reality and stick with the global warming fixation. But it is not for most Canadians, and certainly not for the poorest of them, which should always be our care.

And equally to the point, now that the blizzard of scandals and missteps, the airport clogs, the passport shambles, the WE scandals and the summoning of the near wartime Emergencies Act, have precipitated a drastic fall in the polls and signalled the “horror” of “Trumpian” Pierre Poilievre in the ascendant, would it be possible for the Trudeau government to stop role-playing on the international stage and tend to the less glamorous business of keeping Canada secure and stable?

The current administration is so far out of touch I am not sure a measurement for the distance is available.

National Post

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