By Peter Christensen

Op-Ed Commentary

The Doctor said he has two objectives: to prolong life and to make me feel better, though not necessarily both. A little bit like our choices in the upcoming election. We can vote Conservative and prolong Canadian sovereignty or vote Liberal and feel better.

For the last 10 years the Canadian collective consciousness has been repeatedly scrambled by a cynical Liberal Party that after a decade of financial debacles canned their ‘golden boy’ and found a replacement hero apparently disconnected from good ole boy Quebec politicos, a banker of all things.

Prime Minister Carney, immediately after having been ennobled by the Liberals, put on a good show as an ‘International’ by jetting off to Europe on our dime with a handful of pro Liberal journalists aboard to ensure he would, after kissing King Charles’s ring and cutting a secret deal with President Macron of France, return to Canada with a politically correct message: Respect, Be Patient and Diversity. Not bad.

He then jetted off to Alberta to meet with Premier Smith where he was faced with what Alberta’s energy driven economy would no longer put up with. Skating awkwardly around Edmonton’s Rogers Place in an Oiler’s sweatshirt he shot a lame duck puck into an empty net before jetting back to Ottawa to call the federal election.

Meanwhile Leader of the Opposition Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who had been holding off on his kick-off campaign until the election was announced, avoided citing the obvious theft of the Conservative platform. The Liberal Party, unable to come up with any ideas of their own and stuck with having to live down a decade of bumbling usurped the Conservative platform in a crude attempt to haul back the many Liberal voters who forced JT to resign.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has gone after the Union vote with promises that his government, if elected, will boost training for and create jobs for 350,000 trade workers. Just what these trade workers will be doing is not clear? Though if the Liberals continue to borrow platform from the Conservatives and win the election they would likely put them to work manufacturing arms for Prime Minister Carney’s European confidants to fend off the Russians. So much for Liberal Party peaceniks.

Thankfully Canada’s First Nations are getting their feet under them with projects like the new floating LNG export facility to be built at Kitimat, which recently was granted $200 million by the Liberals, a mere 3.3% of its $6 billion cost. The project ‘owned’ and managed by Pembina Pipelines of Calgary, which is owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co., a giant United States Equity firm, will be built by JGC Fluor, a global corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas, and 60% owner of Pembina Pipelines.

The facility will be built on Haisla Territory. The Haisla First Nation will become part owner of the LNG facility. Their Chief recently assured naysayers that this is a “green” project because the liquified fossil fuel exported will displace the use of coal to expand Asian economies.

What has this got to do with the biggest issue of the coming election: Canadian Sovereignty vs President Trump and his 51st state jargon? Where in the world would President Trump get the idea that Canada is owned by American interests?

Premier Eby recently responded to the tariff scare by pulling a few bottles of American produced liquor off the shelves and by beating his breast about having raised tolls on trucks moving through British Columbia to Alaska where upon the American’s pulled back from signing a renegotiated Columbia River Treaty, a treaty that divides the benefits of the Columbia River hydro and water supply between Canada and the States.

Do I sound a little conflicted?  After a decade of wokeness, social polarization and scrambled consciousness where are we? Ironically, President Trump has done more for Canadian sovereignty in a month than the Liberal Party did in a decade.

– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley based writer and poet.

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