He hailed it as the dawn of the Liberals’ “seize the moment” era, an eye-rolling slogan with a vague meaning introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week as his party’s challenge for the coming parliamentary year.
As I sat in a crowded hospital waiting room on Monday waiting for a routine exam, I watched the first question period of the year on the overhead monitors. I wanted to see if this government was really refreshing itself to face a daunting list of problems, clearly headed by our ailing health care system.
But that moment has passed as our health care and underserved Canada failed to rate even a mention from the Leader of the Official Opposition or his parliamentary parrots.
Patients on the unit with me were left looking at their watches to see how late their oncologist appointments were. Meanwhile, fixing funding for another generation faced zero parliamentary pressure beyond the NDP’s attack on the private provision of publicly funded care.
(Former and perhaps future Green Party leader Elizabeth May has an interesting stake in this debate. She couldn’t find a family doctor for basic preventive care in her British Columbia riding. So while the public might think MPs have it easy , if not preferential, access to care, here we have one of Canada’s most prominent members of parliament sitting on a waiting list with her husband, unable to find a doctor to get the necessary tests for her age group. But I digressed.)
In addition to ignoring the health care moment, Trudeau proceeded to use his first parliamentary appearance in 2023 to serve up large portions of cold toast, a veritable Groundhog Day buffet of boring and chatty repetition.
The time to meet the spending cap is clearly upon us, what with recession warnings from the governor of the Bank of Canada and spending alarms from a former governor, as the deficit-driven national debt rises to $1.1 trillion amid uncertain income. But Trudeau’s response was to pledge his vague willingness to spend whatever it takes to continue pampering Canadians.
“VINTAGE ANSWER TO TRUDEAU”
Meanwhile, the Conservatives decided their Trudeau moment was a dozen-question blitz demanding to be told the value of consulting contracts awarded to McKinsey and Co., whose former boss Dominic Barton is a friend. Alas, there was no meeting of the minds on the other side of the aisle as the prime minister gave Trudeau a vintage response. He just pretended not to hear or understand the question.
And on and on it went, an hour of disgruntled moments, unanswered questions and shotguns full of cheap shots from a Prime Minister and Cabinet reaching back in time for small-caliber ammunition.
He repeatedly, for example, lists his government’s priority as helping the middle class and those who want to join it, as if that line is somehow new instead of recycled from 2015.
On at least two occasions, he responded to McKinsey’s question by reaching back to point to Canada’s child benefit as his government’s signature achievement. This benefit, by the way, was introduced in 2016.
And he continued to trumpet dental care for children as the latest grand Liberal scheme, a jarring gloat given that it was the NDP that forced this support onto his government’s agenda.
Or, of course, there are important moments ahead that he can’t help but encounter, whether he likes it or not.
The cost of subsidies to match the U.S.’s massive incentives for climate-related industries to move south, the looming health care deal, the deep military supply hole and the need to shift oil workers to new industries are challenging clouds on the fiscal horizon.
Still, while the Conservative slogan “Canada feels broken” isn’t exactly a ray of brilliant communications sunshine, it better captures the perception of worried voters than an updated catchphrase concocted in a kumbaya focus group, no doubt paid for by taxpayers.
Based on the first day of Trudeau’s debacle in the House of Commons, “meeting the moment” is destined to become the funniest slogan since the elder Pierre Trudeau’s disastrous campaign rallying cry in 1972, which insisted that “the land is strong’ just as the economy tanked.
So far, Trudeau has meekly greeted his big moments with ducking, wallowing and selective tone-deafness.
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