Thursday, April 19, 2018

Yes, Justin, But What's in the "National Interest" of Our Children and Grandchildren?


Justin Trudeau's highly selective, incredibly narrow, utterly myopic and grossly self-serving definition of Canada's "national interest" is disturbing.

Canada didn't begin with us and it won't end with us either (if we're lucky). When Justin proclaims his bitumen pipeline is in the "national interest" he's not speaking for the nation, the Canada past and the Canada future. The interest he's parroting has very little to do with the nation, Canada. It has everything to do with a small circle of political fiefdoms and the powerful interests they serve.

The video in the previous post is from Alaska but it reflects today's Canada just as much. Watch it. The video demonstrates that "national interest" is not the bastardized span of an electoral cycle. It is a matter of generations. It's a matter of posterity. The national interest is a term devoid of meaning if it does not include the Canada we will bequeath to our children, our grandchildren, and their families in turn.

That's the national interest that this idiot's father understood, that Pierre Trudeau served so well when he implemented for us and for our children and grandchildren and generations beyond, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The constitutional bulwark that has already safeguarded our liberal democracy against the excesses of Harper and, at least once, the same democratic failure in Trudeau.


6 comments:

  1. .. thanks.. it is a superb video, hits all the right notes.. and in some ways its even more frightening because its Alaska.. transformation in months instead of a hundred years. I rode in a big snowcate on the glaciers of Alberta.. the Icefield Highway.. it needs renaming.. the snowcats are long gone, as are the glaciers & the icefields

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  2. Quote:

    "Economist Robyn Allan argues that NEB’s decision to allow a doubling of tolls works as a perversion of market signals.

    “What this means is that not only will pump prices rise if Trans Mountain’s expansion is built, more than $100 million a year will be siphoned away from the B.C. economy to help pay for a new pipeline that provides the local economy with no market enhancement benefit.”

    In other words, B.C. citizens will pay for the cost of building the project with higher gasoline prices.

    Tax Avoider

    Economist Allan has detailed in The Tyee how Kinder Morgan avoids taxes and liabilities by setting up a complicated network of corporations based in several provinces. Thanks to these tax avoidance schemes, Kinder Morgan Canada paid no taxes in 2017."

    From:

    https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/04/20/Facts-About-Kinder-Morgan/

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  3. I read the Tyee piece on Kinder-Morgan, Hugh. It makes Trudeau's obsession with this pipeline, including direct funding and guarantees, that much more questionable. Somebody is whispering nonsense into Junior's ear. Bizarre.

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  4. Does it makes sense to trust the national interest to somebody who wants to make Canada a postnational state? To somebody who said "“There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada." What possibly could the national interest mean to such a person?

    PF

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  5. That had completely slipped my mind. Excellent points, PF. He obviously cannot distinguish national interest from illusory economic opportunity. This does seem to corroborate your argument.

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  6. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hsbc-stop-funding-fossil-fuel-industries-paris-agreement-sustainable-energy-a8315891.html


    National interest!

    TB

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