I want to open with a tangent, probably a few paragraphs long I am sure. As convincing as some of his headlines may be to the casual observer, and all of them are very cynical indeed (and because of this, they can be grabbing; I'm sure Levant learned this trick in his years as a polemicist), sometimes fear-laden ones. So if you're looking for the hot scoop, are gullible (easily influenced by partisan "journalism"), and are eager to hear the full story even if most who are telling it are telling you spin, then you're probably already buying into his asinine garbage. Every single thing he writes isn't to inform readers, but to persuade them into taking on his way of thinking. He's either attacking somebody like a frothing attack dog, or defending one of his buddies (usually in the non-renewable energy industry, such as former
There are important things to bring up before digging into his very bullshit-ridden article to which I will link, regrettably, because it will probably just generate (as little as possible given that I know I don't get much traffic at all) a few page views vital to his cause. Anyway, Ezra Levant has a funny history that he doesn't tell you on his site, in which he self-proclaims to be the "Rebel Commander", the use of which is more telling than anything else. You see, there's a reason he has defended our outgoing Prime Minister and his reign of terror for the entirety of his, well, reign; they're not only former colleagues (they probably will resume this relationship at the very least given that Harper has moved back to Calgary, on a VIP flight provided by the Prime Minister himself!), but they are also friends. This, to some, is some silly thing called a "conflict of interest" wherein you defend something, be it a person, cause, or group/organization because you have a vested interest in it, either and/or personal or professional. Without being too condescending in pretending to be a living, breathing dictionary, Ezra Levant has a personal stake in exactly everything that Harper does, and has done.
It also needs to be stated that Ezra is directly tied with the non-renewable energy sector in a professional matter. His book, "Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oilsands" was not written by accident; it is entirely PR-driven propaganda meant to stave off any criticism directed at the oil sands by redirecting any ire people may have for it at Middle Eastern oil, namely Saudi Arabian & Iraqi oil. Anyone who is fucking anyone knows and would agree with Levant that the oil sands certainly has a moral advantage over the other stuff because of the lack of people getting killed over it, but that really is all that you can say about it. The oil sands has a red ledger, too, and while most people gloss over this by saying "well at least it creates jobs/you don't hear about any issues with it do you?", you can still find out that it wasn't all roses. You know, dumping the discards of bitumen extraction into local geography that included bodies of water (or seeped into bodies of water, as most polluters wish wouldn't happen but it truly does), and the Alberta government mistakenly placing all its eggs in the energy-sector basket (look where that's gotten us).
Never mind that Norway has a far superior economic model than we do. They're handling all of this same stuff better than we ever have and probably ever will, no matter who is running the government and to boot, they're far happier than we are. Makes you want to move there, eh? Whatever, this is about Levant and not about happy Scandinavians. In any case, as Levant was biting his nails in disgust and dread over his fellow Canadian voters giving a 39.5% majority vote to the eeeeeeevil Liberals that one fateful October 19th evening, he was slamming his keyboard to come up with his very predictable reactionary article: Justin Trudeau won. What now? Keep in mind that Levant is the same charming personality who went on a completely insane tirade over Trudeau photo-bombing (with permission, mind you) a wedding photo wherein he gives the bride a peck on the cheek. That wasn't the only time Levant had gone after Trudeau in such a petty fashion, because Trudeau bit him back in response. Oh that Lil' Trudeau, he likes attention don't ya know it?
His article is full of fear mongering, hate mongering, and straight up logical fallacies so numerous and potent that you could use it in University to make a case for "what not to write in Journalism 101" He violates all the rules in the book and happily takes things out of context when he wants to, because providing the real context would hurt his own narrative. The next block is straight out of the article for the purpose of point-by-point response:
Justin Trudeau just won a majority government. Get ready for the pain.
He promised to raise taxes, raise spending and put our country back into debt.
He vowed to kill the Northern Gateway pipeline and to bring in new carbon taxes.
He said he'd abandon our military mission against ISIS terrorists, and take in 25,000 Syrian migrants by Christmas.
Do you doubt he’s going to do it?
His ideas will be a disaster. Government will grow. Personal freedom
will shrink. Our national security will be weakened. And our foreign
policy will tilt far left.
Trudeau is the candidate who said he admires China for its “basic dictatorship”, and promises to normalize relations with Iran.
And who’s going to stop him?
The political left controls most provincial legislatures and the courts. Every university and NGO pushes to the left.
But the worst is the mainstream media. For nine years, they weren’t just watchdogs — they were mad dogs. I called it “Harper Derangement Syndrome”.
Well, after watching the media's pro-Liberal bias in this campaign, do you doubt that they’re about to become Trudeau's lapdogs?
So who will hold the Liberal government to account? Who will shine a light of public scrutiny on what Trudeau does — his fan club at the CBC?
The Sun News Network is gone. The National Post is in disarray. The Conservative Party itself will now be consumed with a divisive leadership race.
So who will be the people’s opposition?The rest of the article is blatant self-aggrandizement that seems to be a very funny, sore-loser like response to the election results. If you read some of the supporting comments on the article you'll see people making such inane and logically self-defeating arguments as, "Only 68.1% of eligible Canadians voted and only 39.5% voted for the Liberals so the majority of Canadians don't support them", even though the most effortless refutation to that argument is that a smaller percentage of voting Canadians voted for the Tories so even less people support them. But can you expect brain power from loyal readers of Levant's inept ramblings?
But let's respond to the temper tantrum on display, shall we?
Justin Trudeau just won a majority government. Get ready for the pain.
If he and his government roll back at least some of the cuts Harper's government made to healthcare during his tenure, then at least someone will be able to ease whatever pain comes from this election. If it ever does, anyway.
He promised to raise taxes, raise spending and put our country back into debt.
As for taxes, the only increase would be on those who are in the 1 percentile range. You know, the people who hold the majority of the wealth in his country and have been allowed to pocket more and more of it from the rest of us while the cost of living continues to surge faster than what we actually make at work. Yes, every year we'd get a minimum wage increase, usually of 25 cents per hour, but can $10.50 an hour help you keep your barebones bachelor suite in Vancouver afloat for even a whole month? Probably not. As for spending, you know what they say, "you gotta spend money to make money."
An oblivious bragging point for the Tories right now even though by rights they shouldn't, is how they 'balanced the budget'. Unfortunately, you don't achieve that while the country is in a recession wherein several hundred thousand Canadians lose their jobs in less than a year and thus are unable to spend as much money around the country as they could before, let alone contribute to tax collection. You get a "balanced budget" by making cuts to various programs, mostly for ideological reasons. On the subject of spending (especially of the lavish variety) remember that Harper, during the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto, personally spent $1+ billion in securing police security forces that went on to commit crimes against humanity that will line the history books for years to come. Also remember his "Economic Action Plan" that put more money in the pockets of his political pals than in those who were said to be benefit from it such as post-secondary students, which included myself for two years during the early 2010's.
As for debt, we aren't alien to that. There is such a thing as "debt recovery" although I am sure that right-wing blowhards like you love to deny its potential manifestation in the case of Trudeau's run in the government. If the USA can get on that road to recovery, then surely we can.
He vowed to kill the Northern Gateway pipeline and to bring in new carbon taxes.
Don't forget that he wants the Keystone XL pipeline to move forward, so he's not all bad, guy! But, when it comes to carbon taxes, if you have read any interviews with Trudeau in the past year you'd know that he finds a centralized, federal approach is dated. Rather, he wants it to be left to the provinces. Indeed, Quebec (Alberta's most hated target), B.C. and even Alberta have their own systems for carbon taxation. The latter two in particular are revenue neutral and Alberta's system actually brought about a decrease in individual tax rates. There's no other platform that his party has pertaining to carbon taxes, so lying about it just gets you nowhere, Ezra.
He said he'd abandon our military mission against ISIS terrorists, and take in 25,000 Syrian migrants by Christmas.
If you mean that he'd abandon Harper's current methodology of putting boots on the ground to get killed aimlessly while only protecting Syria & Libya, as Harper's government was only willing to protect those two regions in spite of ISIS' continuous and worrying growth throughout Asia and even Northern Africa, then yes. But to say that he wouldn't do anything about that conflict but abandon it, a conflict for which there is a huge conundrum with no simple solutions, is simply fallacious. He now wants to do it the responsible way, which I assume to mean restoring our image as peace-keepers who distribute medical and food aid to affected regions rather than trying to look like gung-ho glorified killers. The Syrian refugee crisis is another conundrum for which there are no simple answers. You need to take in at least some, but if you're going to let paranoia and fear of a few possible ISIS fuckheads taking advantage of this exodus determine your final decision on the matter then ISIS has already won. As for doing all of that by Christmas this year? That's a stretch, regardless if Trudeau said it or not. Because the plan now is to get something done by 2016.
Do you doubt he’s going to do it?
Loaded question of the century. You had already made up your mind prior to even writing that; you just had to come to terms with it and accept it.
His ideas will be a disaster. Government will grow. Personal freedom will shrink. Our national security will be weakened. And our foreign policy will tilt far left. Trudeau is the candidate who said he admires China for its “basic dictatorship”, and promises to normalize relations with Iran.
What a load of crap, all of it. You don't know if something will be a disaster until it is actually implemented and its effects are felt. But unlike what the media in this country wants to tell you, you need to let things take their course before you can judge them. Even prior to the Alberta NDP government enacting any kind of tax increase, rather just announcing a possibility of them, you had media and their friends in the energy sector (mostly) committing crimes against humanity by laying off hundreds, even thousands of people just over the possibility of a tax increase on the wealthiest Albertans. And then the NDP themselves said that "no tax increase will happen on their watch" and the companies betraying these now unemployed Canadians looked even worse than before.
How will the government grow, exactly? And personal freedom will actually grow at least a little bit because he wants to legalize marijuana, which reduce the number of new felons added to our criminal justice system. Lots of people like to smoke the stuff in this country, and under Trudeau they won't have to worry about merely being seen possessing the drug. I dunno, man, that sounds like more personal freedom than the other way around.
How will our national security be weakened? If anything, the Liberals will be more open diplomatically (not shunning the United Nations is one thing) and won't be so antagonistic towards foreign bodies. What's wrong with that? Or do we have to maintain the status quo that really is much ado about nothing? What you probably like, Levant, is his apparent position on recognizing a Palestinian state; he won't.
The last line is especially egregious and is perhaps the most sinful handful of words assembled in the article. What Levant is purposefully doing is trying to engineer a train of thought; the thought, in your gullible head of course, that Justin Trudeau actually likes that China is a "basic dictatorship." That would be the case if it were what he said, but it isn't. Granted, I've read what he really said and frankly it isn't all that much better, given that it infuriated a lot of people, but you be the judge.
From the CBC's article - Justin Trudeau's 'foolish' China remarks spark anger (click here to read):
The Liberal leader was asked which nation he admired most. He responded: "There's a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime."Base level literacy reveals that he didn't express admiration for their basic dictatorship, but for the economic recovery they made, for which the basic dictatorship as he calls it is partially responsible. Mind you his choice of words was still rather poor, being that China has a reputation for squelching political dissidents and controlling information traffic in the country, whether by televised media or via the internet. They certainly don't have a sterling reputation as a bastion of freedom, but he's at least partially correct. Just like, and you can't deny this, the fact that Hitler's reign of terror in Germany jump-started an economic recovery for the country that was hit the hardest following World War One (the Treaty of Versailles did the country no favours) and the Great Depression. You could certainly say a lot of bad things about Adolf, for sure, but he did do something right, even if people suffered pain & death in the interim.
To cut this one short I will state an observation I've made over the years about self-professed right-wingers: they are very quick to commit such fallacies as quote-mining (as seen here) and cherry picking, so this is no surprise to me.
And who’s going to stop him?
You obviously fancy yourself as the one who is going to stop him. Provided you get donations from your readers. As if you didn't get enough from the crowdfunding drive you ran in order to jump-start your shitty site in the first place.
The political left controls most provincial legislatures and the courts. Every university and NGO pushes to the left.
Even the ones run, partially or in full I am not entirely sure, right here in oil country? Athabasca University ring a bell? It's pretty much paid for by interests for which you fight, Levant.
Otherwise this point appears to be a non-sequitur. What does this really have to do with Trudeau winning the election? You do realize that Atlantic Canada, half of which historically voted Conservative in most elections, was fucking swept by the Liberals this election cycle? That came as an absolute surprise to me given that I've come to know about the place after living there for over half a dozen years.
But the worst is the mainstream media. For nine years, they weren’t just watchdogs — they were mad dogs. I called it “Harper Derangement Syndrome”.
Another egregious example of you sticking up for your good buddy Harper, no matter what reality says otherwise. Our media just happens to be a lot more partisan-neutral than you'd like. Also, you conveniently leave out the fact that Harper not only detested our media, but controlled it with an iron fist. Media blackouts and self-serving demands like not attending debates where "tough questions" would be asked of him were just some of the routine acts he's pulled off, all so the people of Canada don't see him for the chickenshit bully that he is. He hardly ever gave them a chance, that is unless they were your former TV station Sun Media where he was treated like a fucking GOD!
And good on them any time they'd actually hold him accountable for his actions. I know for sure that you want something like this done to Trudeau and on that I'd absolutely agree, simply by virtue of him being Prime Minister, but when it's done to your good pal(s) you turn the other cheek and pretend the rules don't apply to you.
Fuck that.
Well, after watching the media's pro-Liberal bias in this campaign, do you doubt that they’re about to become Trudeau's lapdogs?
It should be mentioned that Post Media was fucking outed, on election night (only echoed in the media shortly thereafter) for trying to get every single paper the organization owns, which includes your god awful "Sun" rags by the way, to endorse Stephen Harper. In the editorial sections, especially. Who was the National Post guy present with Peter Mansbridge that night? I forgot his name but you know who I'm talking about. That's the guy whose ties to the National Post was cut because he refused to endorse Harper.
But granting you this, if they do become his lapdogs, then they should by all means be held accountable for this infraction, whenever or however it takes place. See how easy that is? Mind you, you and your ilk would be given the same fucking treatment were things different on election night.
So who will hold the Liberal government to account? Who will shine a light of public scrutiny on what Trudeau does — his fan club at the CBC?
Hopefully the legitimate media, and not your "rebellious" one that carries such a blatantly obvious partisan agenda. There will definitely be scrutiny directed at his cabinet's actions. What matters most is that it is as fair and partisan-free as possible. I know that you and your toadies at The Rebel and anything in Post Media won't grant him that, so you guys can piss in a hat.
The Sun News Network is gone. The National Post is in disarray. The Conservative Party itself will now be consumed with a divisive leadership race.
So who will be the people’s opposition?
Thank the cosmos for the first part! And the National Post is a disgrace to journalism, so hell fucking yes to that, too! And it's about time they get a new leader. Maybe then they won't alienate so many voters and might actually charter a new course for Canadian politics. Or maybe they won't.
And you don't care about the people, so please, don't pretend. You care about yourself and your rich buddies in the oilsands and in the PC party, not the people who actually have to struggle to get by in this country that has allowed itself to be overly dependent on industry that has since failed it. But by all means keep entertaining us with these inane rambles about Trudeau, for whom you have a very fascinating yet creepy obsession.
