e-KNOW Editorial

By Ian Cobb

Well Prime Minister Short Pants, you’ve done it now.

Your father’s smarmy petulance stormed out of you the past few weeks, as you cemented the beginning of the end of your leadership by utterly failing to step from your ivory tower to attempt, even remotely, to quell protests that should not have happened.

Like all Canadians, our Prime Minister is clearly sick and tired of the COVID-19 pandemic but unlike the rest of Canadians, our Prime Minister must be bigger and better than what he has shown in the last few months. You know, the ole maxim ‘’lead by example.’

If you want childish, pissy citizens, act like one in front of them.

Plagued by numerous scandals and lucky to win re-election, Justin Trudeau now appears disinterested in Canada as a whole. I’ll give him this whole Russia/Ukraine and possible Third World War thing might be a bit distracting.

Still, again, off the ivory tower Prime Minister and focus on your own country.

There is a major problem and it is growing; the Great National Divide. Your dismissive language, such as calling the truck convoy folks “fringe” elements and speaking down to them, as though they do not matter, simply made you look like the elitist wonk that the right has you painted as.

Look, you had roughly 80% of Canadians on your side heading into the start of this convoy, which was tainted by extremist nuts who have had their minds wiped by Russian, Chinese, Iranian and American digital war rooms, operating heavily on Youtube and other social media platforms.

And that support has dwindled as you dithered before a damned if you and damned if you don’t decision. Great leaders make prompt decisions. You took three weeks and your decision was to find out what it is like to have near dictatorial powers, again gushing fuel onto the diesel fire of perceptions that you are stick-handling toward oligarchy.

You blamed tow truck drivers for not doing their jobs, as the reason for the build-up of trucks and protesters near Parliament. You sat back and let Ottawa’s municipal government and police force take it on the chin from outraged residents.

Under your watch as our Prime Minister, numerous border crossings were blockaded, forcing the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to our economy. You blamed the provinces for some blockades and finally acted when US President Joe Biden barked at you.

It’s a federal border. They’re operated by the Canadian Border Services Agency. As leader of this land, you should have had a plan in place to ensure our border with the US, only really re-opened since this damned pandemic began, remained open. That’s a giant red F on your report card, short pants.

On the day Ottawa citizens got their city back, Parliament narrowly voted to approve the use of the Emergencies Act, with the usual political gamesmanship on fully display from all the parties, showcasing once again how insultingly grotesque party politics has become.

Remember way back when you said you’d look into proportional representation as the future to voting federally in Canada and then when you won a majority you conveniently forgot about that?

What a shame because Canada needs that as a way out of this stupefying trend of divisiveness, pushed onward by weak leadership and by the vast irresponsibility of social media platforms and those who manipulate them.

But more than that, we need our political parties to start doing better. Enough of this playing the citizenry against one another for political points.

We voters send you jokers to Ottawa to represent our ridings and our nation and it is damned well past time for you lot to start doing that as opposed to prancing about in endless disinformation dances, preying on the least able to comprehend your tactics.

Canadians, right, left and centre have more in common than our current political system portrays. Your crappy discourse, balanced on a thin beam of prevarication and the convenience of flip-flipping stands is infectious and it is emulated on social media.

Maybe start thinking about that as we move forward from this national embarrassment, especially you Mr. Prime Minister. As the duly elected leader of this land, this mess is your fault.

– Ian Cobb is owner/editor of e-KNOW

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