Michael Harris writes that a choice between Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer is a lousy choice. Trudeau has proved to be a remarkable blunderer. The list of his mistakes keeps getting longer:
Trudeau overpays for a pipeline carrying dirty oil through pristine rivers and forests in British Columbia;
He exempts certain tarsands projects from new environmental assessment rules in a crude trade-off with Alberta;
He considers loosening restrictions on the pollution of major rivers with toxic effluent from tarsands tailing ponds;
He allows the unregulated use of seismic blasting to explore for oil and gas on Canada’s east coast, right whales be damned;
That serial incompetence and hubris cost the PM two star cabinet ministers, his principal secretary, and his clerk of the privy council. And it is why he stands at a miserable 27 per cent in the most recent Leger poll conducted between April 18 and 22 for the Canadian Press — 13 points behind Scheer and the Conservatives.
Scheer, on the other hand, is worse:
But here’s the rub. As disappointing as Trudeau has been to many voters, the traditional alternative, the official Opposition, is far, far worse.
The government-in-waiting led by Andrew Scheer is a collection of Harper era re-treads peddling the same populist Republican policies Canadians vigorously rejected in 2015. As a group, the Conservatives’ favourite driving gear is reverse.
When the Tories had a chance to take the party in a new direction with a new leader, a step or two perhaps toward the values of the old Progressive Conservatives, they rejected someone like Michael Chong and chose Harper-clone Scheer. That was the declaration that, at least ideologically, this is still Harper’s party.
That could be why the Conservatives have never rejected the trademark policies of the Harper years that cost them government in 2015.
If you want to vote Green, your best hope is for a minority government with Elizabeth May holding the balance of power. So, here's the question. How do you arrange that without electing Scheer as the next prime minister?
I ask that from a province where Doug Ford is now the premier.
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