LETTER

Justin Trudeau, after one year

 

Justin Trudeau has been Prime Minister for almost a year and has yet to deliver many of his campaign promises and has, in fact, broken many of them.  It is surprising he is still extremely popular.   He understands that our population values style over substance. (Can you imagine Harper taking "selfies" with the public?  Can you imagine Trudeau maintaining a low profile?)  It is also because he likes to spend taxpayers' money.   And he likes to borrow.  The people want the government to spend more than it earns, as do they. (Canadians’ debt-to-earnings ratio: for every $1.00 earned, they owe $1.68.)  Voters elected the Liberals on the promise they would go into deficit by $10 billion per year.  Their first deficit will be three times that ($29.4 billion) for 2016-17.

Our trade shortfall (June 2016) was $3.6 billion; our non-energy exports had the fifth straight monthly decline; Stats Can reported 31,000 jobs lost in July 2016 (far from the predicted increase of 10,000 jobs); and the unemployment rate rose to 6.9% (8.6% in Alberta).  Despite this, the media continues its admiration of our "new" PM.  (These facts are from Macleans, The Globe and Mail, and Huffington Post.)  In social media, the "honeymoon" continues.  Trudeau opposed Harper’s plan for fighting climate change; now in power, Trudeau adopted Harper's targets.  Not a negative "peep" anywhere. Hmmm!

I conclude it is more important to get in front of cameras and to travel around the globe, more important to be seen spending money to benefit people, even borrowed money that will never be paid back in our, or our grandchildren's, lifetimes.  Politics is all about image and expensive promises. With all those billions in deficit funding for infrastructure, increase the GIS for seniors, restoring OAS back to age 65, improving indigenous communities, redesigning the Canada Child Benefit, etc., why are we in worse economic and job conditions now?

Trudeau's mantra is "Canada is back!" and if he repeats it often enough (especially at international conferences of which he has not seemingly missed even one), this implies that Canada had "been away"!   He’s scoring lots of "away" points.  Too bad for "at home" businesses and the unemployed; they have to wait.  Our international reputation is more important.    

Steve d'Eça
Aylmer