EDITORIAL: Trudeau is saying: 'L'etat, c'est moi'
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s approach to governing can best be described as “l’etat, c’est moi,” meaning “I myself am the state.”
While there’s doubt that French monarch King Louis XIV, “the sun king,” actually said this phrase attributed to him, the idea behind it — one-person rule by absolute power — is a philosophy to which it seems Trudeau aspires.
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We should have known when he said years ago that he admired China’s “basic dictatorship.”
Since the pandemic hit in mid-March, Trudeau has been happiest ducking question period and kneecapping parliamentary oversight, while announcing the spending of hundreds of billions of tax dollars during daily photo-ops outside his house.
But even that pales in comparison to Trudeau’s performance this week.
First he orchestrated the resignation of Finance Minister Bill Morneau, replacing him with minister-of-everything Chrystia Freeland, who, while she becomes Canada’s first female finance minister, also knows the only way to survive in Trudeau’s cabinet is to do exactly what he says.
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Then Trudeau announced he’ll prorogue Parliament until Sept. 23, which means shutting it down, including the Commons committees investigating Trudeau’s role in the WE Charity scandal.
Trudeau has broken his 2015 election promise that he would never use prorogation “to avoid difficult political circumstances” as he accused Stephen Harper of repeatedly doing when he was in power.
By the time Morneau announced his resignation Monday, his credibility had been shredded by damaging leaks to the media by the Liberals.
The most absurd was that Morneau had to go because he failed to pay for a $41,000 WE trip until after the controversy broke.
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It’s absurd because if Morneau had to resign, then Trudeau should have been right behind him, given his far more significant role in awarding a now-cancelled untendered contract to run an ill-conceived student volunteer program, given to an organization to whom Trudeau and his family are closely tied.
Canadians don’t need prorogation from our “sun king” as he plans a reset of his agenda, no doubt designed to strengthen Liberal polling numbers. They need pragmatic recovery efforts to strengthen the economy right now.
As Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre rightly described Tuesday’s political goon show in Ottawa, “we have a government of elites and self-serving snobs who look down on ordinary working class Canadians.”
Indeed. We’d call them renegades in power.
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