Thoughtful people worried that we had reached “the limits of growth,” the point at which the world would begin running out of natural resources. Prime minister Pierre Trudeau warned Canadians, most notoriously in his Dec. 28, 1975, end of year interview: “We haven’t been able to make it work, the free enterprise system.”
And yet the conservative party has nothing whatsoever to say against probably 98% percent of the policies which Trudeau promoted or implemented in his war against free enterprise. Instead all they can do is blather about making communism “accountable” and “fiscally balanced”.
They’re not the lesser of two evils, they’re only the most dishonest.
It’s not about Trudeau’s policies of 30 years ago; the new benchmark is the brand new social policies that Dion wants to introduce that even Trudeau wouldn’t conceive of, such as a $15 billion a year state run unionized daycare system.
Within that context it is illogical and mathematically incorrect to suggest that Harper and the CPC are comparable to Dion and the Liberal party.
Pierre Trudeau’s remarks against capitalism always seemed and still seem fraudulent, because his money came from his father, Charless Trudeau, who made that money as a successful businessman. Charles Trudeau apparently owned a chain of gas stations (gasp!) around Montreal; and later invested in (shudder!) mining.
I wonder if Justin Trudeau is going to denounce his grandfather!
So if 98% Harpers Conservative policies are like Trudeau’s does that make Pierre Trudeau a right-wing neo-Con, Ugh?
“So if 98% Harpers Conservative policies are like Trudeau’s does that make Pierre Trudeau a right-wing neo-Con”
If “wife-beating anti-semite” doesn’t work for you, then sure.
/Oh yeah, I went there
True_dough was an ardent global depopulationist…all champaign class commies are…they have their little piece of the the pie and htye don’t want to share it… the soiled masses need to be kept at a controllable level….of course none of the population “culling” effects the philosopher-kings of the global socialist revolution like his nibs King Pierre the questionable.
Now his mindless silver spoon brats are mouthing this depopulationsist-anti capitalism ( sustainability) spew…shows the champaign commie gene is passed on the male side. 😉
Anyway, not to berate old Dave Frum too much but he’s become too much of a myopic cheerleader himself for the American/capitalist ideals ….someone should inform him neither the republic or the capitalist system is working as advertised.
Capitalism has been both a gift and a burden to free democracies..,,free matket capitalism built us the wealthiest free nations on earth….however, after we lost our fully free market dynamics to central control by big government and big corporate power, between the limited profit potential of a politically unconnected enterpriser and the capital gains and income tax shake down from central governing cabals….the centrally controlled capitalist system has confiscated more of our productivity than we get to keep.
One of the reasons the Ruskis and Chi-coms switched to centrally controlled capitalism is they realized they can shake the average worker or producer down for way more revenues than under the communist system.
Wrong pronoun; YOU couldn’t make it work, Pierre. Canada’s best known puffin drops a bomb and leaves it unburied.
One of the cliches of Canadian journalism has it that Trudeau was “our Kennedy;” maybe “our Chavez” would be closer to the mark?
Pierre Trudeau…not dead enough
Trudeau’s spawn is the next big splat for the Liberals to put up as a star, they can hardly wait.
They may be in for a wee surprise, we haven’t gotten over Papa yet, and said spawn is still wet behind the ears. Actually seems rather vacuous.
They’ll have to get rid of Dion and Iggy and maybe even Rae, but no problem, they’ll just have to whet their appetites and start eating like the good cannibals they are.
P.M. Trudeau was wrong at every point.
In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of this, he is revered by the Canadian media-political complex.
He brow-beat Canadians, and we loved him for it. Canadians equated arrogance and contempt with leadership.
He was wrong about both economic Canada and social Canada; Muroney, not Trudeau, is the architect of Canada’s present prosperity; Trudeau is the architect of Canada’s precipitous moral disintegration.
Richard — I saved your last paragraph. Thank You for such an accurate description of the last 40 years.
Hear, hear, Richard. And if only Joe Clark had a brain, we wouldn’t have the Charter.
“Trudeau is the architect of Canada’s precipitous moral disintegration.”
I agree completely. We should immediately criminalize homosexuality and abortion, bring back the death penalty and privatize health care.
That would make us a much more morally integrated society, just like Jesus would have wanted.
Joe Clark always was stupid, even as a kid he was a dope. Believe it or not he couldn’t even hold a job in an ice cream parlor during his College days.
The Conservative smoke and mirror show: Let’s keep picking on a dead guy while carrying on with the policies he implemented.
PET makes Mulroney look like a god.
Ugh – what policies are you referring to? A general statement such as yours hasn’t any meaning.
andrew – yes, most of us can agree that there is no logical comparison between Harper and the Conservatives and Dion and the Liberals. But a mathematical correlation? Since when is a political party definable by mathematics?
selfloathing – What does private health care have to do with morality? Surely you can’t be saying that if a society has private health care it is amoral??
And, abortion, homosexuality and the death penalty are issues of morality but are not, in themselves, universally moral or immoral. They are complex and social issues – to be defined by the society.
What Trudeau did was to set up the operating infrastructure of Canada as a population divided against itself. He divided the population by hereditary attributes: language, ethnicity, religion.
He separated the population into adversarial blocks by these definitions – and these are in our charter (which is not a charter of rights but of enslavement). And the Liberal Party proceeded to govern by manipulating these separate blocks by setting them against each other, and by bribing each block for votes in return for funds.
He then attempted to maintain the old power base of the Liberal Party, which is Ontario-Quebec, a power base valid after WWII and which ought to have dissolved by 1980. Trudeau maintained this power base by his bilingualism – which enshrined Canadians into two distinct groups- and Trudeau encouraged and aided the fear scenario of separatism. He set up Quebec as radical and angry; and Ontario as the ‘saviour’ of the country – to appease Quebec and keep the country together. This kept the Liberal vote secure in Ontario and in Montreal.
He effectively destroyed the West for two decades with his NEP – which kept political and economic power in Ontario and Quebec.
That’s over. But the Liberals of today still operate in Trudeau’s old infrastructure of Ontario-Quebec, of federalism vs separatism, and of divide and rule multicultural groups.
So, in 1975 Trudeau said the free enterprise system does not work.
Then a decade latter his beloved communistic/socialistic system failed and the Berlin Wall came down.
Especially galling, when one realizes this hippy was rich because of the free enterprise way.
Actually, lberia, you are of course, quite wrong.
There are several aspects of Trudeau’s infrastructure which we cannot readily reject because he enshrined them in the so-called ‘charter of rights’. This sets up a divide and rule infrastructure. A population divided into isolate adversarial hereditary blocks (cultural heredity). It’s in the charter.
However, his repression of the west is over. His centralization of political power in Ontario-Quebec, with the issue being federalism vs separatism, is over.
Harper’s strategy of decentralization of federal powers – a tactic rejecting the Liberal centralism – returns self-organizing power to Quebec, to the West, etc and reduces the federal power. The federal power had, under and since Trudeau intruded more and more into the domain of the provinces. Harper is reversing that.
The isolationism of Canada under Trudeau, who sneered at participation in the safekeeping of the world, has ended.
The rejection of private enterprise and the inability of Canada to develop an investor class, is ending.
These changes are not easy to implement. The legacy of the Liberals, besides the braindead perspective, is entrenched in the Senate – which is blocking Harper, in the MSM – which is campaigning against him; in the judiciary, in the civil service etc.
So, lberia, you may prefer a communist state, but, it’s not going to happen.
If we can’t make the free market system work then heaven help us if we try to implement a socialist or communist system. The more economic options available to most people working for their own self interest the greater the chance of success. Compare that with the one economic option available the the masses working for the advancement of state controlled enterprise.
As the Russian workers used to say “they pretend to pay us but that’s ok ’cause we only pretend to work”.
Richard Ball, September 22, 2007 5:08 PM.
The last sentence of the comment describes in essence why are the econonmic and social conditions of today, the way they are.
I am an immigrant.
I visited Rene Levesque and Pierre Trudeau, when they were laying in state – just to make sure they really were dead.
Let’s move forward.
Bolshevik at September 22, 2007 7:43 PM :
The thing is that Western governments went in for a large dose of socialism, in the name of “populist new deal” or “fairness” or “social justice”. The government bureaucracy found a convenient excuse to increase itself, therefore the salaries for its bureaucrats. The politicianms found an amazing way of getting elected by bribing people with their own, or even better other peoples’, money.
Along with this socialism went “university for all”, ignoring the excellence criteria for entering university. And the university professors loved this as it required more university professors to indoctrinate more students in this new political philosophy.
It was a win-win-win situation for these blood-sucking scum-bags, a class of which Trudeau was not even a member because he was the independantly wealthy sion of a rich man. However, not being very bright he bought, or, being smart played along with, the ideology of these scum-bags and we are stuck with it today, due to the bureaucratic inertia of the government “Borg”.
Capitalism works fine. So good in fact that its been able to be tapped to pay for all sorts of stupid ideas that don’t work. But I have no strong opinions on this…
ET:
Prove that Trudeau repressed the West.
Prove that Trudeau centralized political power in Ontario and Quebec.
Prove that Canada was isolationist under Trudeau.
Prove that Trudeau rejected free enterprise.
Prove that Trudeau is responsible for the lack of an investor class in Canada.
Proof Iberia
Proof
You can’t handle the proof
Was Trudeau the one who adopted the English ‘O, Canada!’ where the words
Will protect our home and rights
were dropped?
My kids will never sing English O, Canada again starting today, when they showed me the English translation of original French O, Canada!
Your army carries the sword
And it also carries the cross.
Shove it, Turdoh!
You are being silly, Aaron.
http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/cpsc-ccsp/sc-cs/anthem_e.cfm#h2
Thanks to the SDA Trolliletariate, for without your heads held high, ET’s hammer might lay idle at times.
Let me tell you about socialism, it destroys human spirit. The socialists look at people as a worthless nothing, the slogan is ‘You are with us or you are against us’, never mind what you think, we think better. The thing is, that socialists don’t give a whit about what is good for you. The idea is that you follow what they say, not what, you think, because after all what you think really does not count. You are more or less a beast in the wilderness.
Used to work with a communist from Salvador in Calgary. The guy readily admitted that communism is a religion in the real sense of the world, because you have to believe the nonsense, though the guy said that he cannot change, all the while investing in capitalist enterprises. This is when you get the drift that brainwashing is an effective technique that is employed by the socialists, communists and fascists, among other nefarious techniques.
Met a guy that went to school in Saskatchewan, he was a teacher and of course socialist, because teachers are, by nature socialists, they teach kids and think that everyone else should listen to them. Anyway the guy said that socialism was a normal course of events in the schools in Saskatchewan, they were actually taught in a public school in a democratic country about the imaginary virtues of socialism.
Now I’m thinking, enough already.
Socialism is not taught in schools. That’s a crock. I know some teachers and they are from every political stripe. The tories and liberals are proof free enterprise does not work. Give your head a shake. Read 1984….written by a Jewish writer. God forbid. Read Animal farm> I doubt that anyone as ignorant as you bunch can even understand these books.
Trudeau couldn’t make the capitalism work because he was breaking his neck trying to make socialism work.
He failed. Socialism always fails because it lacks the essential ingredient … incentive.
Trudeau was an intellectual idiot as are all over educated elitist leftist socialists.
This has been proven time and again. And to quote one of Trudeau’s favorite hemorrhoids. “A proof is a proof is a proof.”
Shawn said: “Capitalism works fine. So good in fact that its been able to be tapped to pay for all sorts of stupid ideas that don’t work”
Now you’re getting it…..we haven’t had a free market capitalist system here since the new deal era.
There is so much government and special interest interference in the free market here that better than 50 % of productivity is confiscated to the state and it’s minions. Supply and demand dynamics are meddled with by government marketing boards and patronage cartels to the point where no Canadian pays the real cost of goods and supply is completely artificial…only demand is real.
The controlled and reliant economies of the western democracies approximate the state-capitalist systems in China and Russia…in many cases a Chinese producer has less restraints and taxes and has more rights to property than a north American.
Once China’s and Russia’s central banks inflate their money supply artificially and introduce heavier personal tax burdens they will have a lifestyle where their workers won’t revolt against the state taking 50% or better of their productivity because of a social safety net paid for with borrowed inflated money….just like us.
we have enough history to know that socialism doesn’t work all that well. what we don’t have is a view of the earth as a finite piece of dirt that will eventually reach it’s carrying capacity. when? who knows. to date we have been able to increase the food and goods necessary for life at a rate that has kept up to population growth. when will that stop? it will stop.
Socialism was taught in school in Saskatchewan where this guy went to, he said so and obviously he agreed with the idea. An individual teacher today has no say in anything at a forum, teacher must follow the official diktat of the prescribed dogma or the teacher is out, no question about it.
On the other hand, who would know the difference, since it is the only idea taught in schools today. Democracy is always qualified, in fact it is qualified so much that socialism and fascism, take your pick, are becoming the face of democracy, it itself becomes disqualified.
1984 is where the socialism is heading for, ethnicity of the writer is irrelevant.
“I visited Rene Levesque and Pierre Trudeau, when they were laying in state – just to make sure they really were dead.”
Wimpy,
I tried to see Trudeau laying in state, but they wouldn’t let me in with a stake and hammer.
Free enterprise works in spite of the burden and barriers that the politicians yoke it with. They need the free enterprise to create the wealth they can steal and then give, as though it is their money, to get elected and pay themselves handsomely, some of it tax free. How about that? The great masses, like the imaginary free stuff that the politicians provide from the billions that they take from free enterprise and the working people.
Its funny, I just had this discussion yesterday with the PC candidate for my riding and a surgeon. We all agreed the system was broken and what was needed was -less- regulation, more flexibility in medical education and a private option to take the weight off the public system.
But then the surgeon wants to know if funding religious schools is going to take money from the public school, or if “new” money is going to come.
I about picked my jaw up off the floor at that point. Trudeau lives on, boys and girls.
Here’s a surgeon. A guy who is as educated and as smart as it gets. He sees the central planning bureaucracy squeezing the life out of HIS profession but he can’t make the connection to the teaching profession.
And that, boys and girls, is what keeps Ontario f-ed. The only solution people can even think of, visualize, imagine, is more/better/different central planning.
Doctors, businessmen, teachers, they all know intellectually that central planning does not work in their professions. They see it not-work every damn day, and they feel the frustration as their efforts to just do their jobs properly are blunted and dissipated by credentialism, bureaucratic inertia and office politics. But they have been so conditioned by our education system and the MSM that they can’t think outside the box they are in.
Refreshingly, the PC Candidate is ex-military and understands the problems with re-arranging the deck chairs while the ship steams for the iceberg. We’ll see how he shapes up when we WIN the election .
What is exactly the problem with funding schools other than public, religious or otherwise although I do have serious bias and concerns about some of the religions.
Those people that want to send their children to school other then public, pay taxes just like anyone else and as long as the government supplies the money on par with the public schools what’s the problem? There however should not be any funding for the extras that a charter school or a religious school may have.
lberia – you don’t seem to know your history.
Trudeau repressed and almost destroyed the West; that’s called NEP.
Trudeau continued a centralist govt – which is also a Liberal strategy and embedded it in the Charter with his division of Canadians into two adversarial linguistic groups. He set up Quebec as terrorist and terrorized victim (their rejection of the Constitution); and Ontario as required appeaser – defining Canada as these two provinces. He ignored or desecrated the rest.
In Ontario, he balkanized and weakened the population with his multiculturalism, which disabled the immigrant population from becoming Canadian and froze them into clones of their ethnic and religious origins. He kept them dependent in this isolation by federal funding and legal privileging of group vs individual. That’s in his Charter.
His contempt for other countries -except for communist countries is well documented – eg, his preference for China and Cuba.
His rejection of free enterprise – found within the encroaching federal taxation, abrogation of powers from the provinces and the total lack of enabling an investor class. That’s classic Liberal Party policies.
>Right ok4u, socialism isn’t taught in schools, it’s promoted in schools. No, not every instructor is a socialist but the majority are.
To be fair to a few of my former teachers, I have to say some of the most outwardly socialist were the most capable of instructors. They were just detached from reality when it came to politics and human nature, they demanded performance from their students and were gifted in their approach to teaching. If I recall correctly one of them even crossed his union’s picket line such was his dedication to his students. A couple of them recanted their political positions later in life and came over to the ‘right’ side.
Jewish? I said it’s the left these days that the problems accepting the Jewish community, pretty apparent when you follow the news.
Well we can’t all be the gifted intellectual you are, but I believe there are a few regular posters to Kate’s blog that have a ‘rudimentary’ (‘rudimentary’ intended as sarcasm to you) grasp of Orwell’s novels. I doubt if you would number among them.
It’s nice to be able to catch a little Canuck socialist diarrhea while vactioning in Germany, can’t wait to get back! 🙁
BTW, even in Berlin the past is quickly forgotten, the bile rose in my throat when I noticed the ‘Make Capitalism Obsolete’ posters plastered on lamp posts; though you have to love the postcards of the East German Border Guard jumping the barbed wire in 1961 to the ‘right’ side.
That’s not proof, ET…that’s just your opinion. Come on, let’s see some facts and figures; let’s see documentation. (ie. Provide proof that Trudeau said, “I prefer Cuba to other countries.”)
It’s time you held yourself to the same standard you expect from other commentators.
lberia – what, exactly, is my opinion?
The NEP? That’s reality, not opinion.
The Charter and its content? That’s reality, not opinion. Check out the vast sections on bilingualism and the privileging of multiculturalism vs the individual.
The taxation structure? That’s reality, not opinion.
The lack of an investor class? That’s reality, not opinion. Check out statistics on wealth in Canada, on the requirement for foreign investment, on the percentages of capital and corporate taxes.
Trudeau’s preference for Cuba and China, both communist countries? That’s reality, not opinion. Kindly do not change my words; I said ‘his contempt for other countries’, his ‘preference for China and Cuba’ does not equal ‘I prefer Cuba to other countries’.
And his preference is well-documented, in his book on Red China, in his behaviour to Cuba and Castro – including an official visit and his personal friendship with Castro.
You, lberia, a communist, probably approve of Trudeau, whose well-known sympathies for communism are well-documented.
How about Trudeau’s moving Canada into its generation long anti-Americanism, with his statements of ‘Will the US sacrifice Europe and NATO before blowing up the world’? (1968) And, his support for the Soviet Union when they invaded Czechoslovakia with ‘Can we assume that Russia wants war because it invaded Czechoslovakia”?
That’s quite the semantic twist – to transform a full scale invasion into a tourist’s stroll through, to transform the subjugation of a people to communism to irrelevancy, and to chastize anyone who objects as effectively, a ‘warmonger’.
And his turning his back on Europe – and the US – and attempting to focus Canadian interests in Latin America (Cuba, Dominican Republic etc) and other states whose rebels were part of the extension of Soviet Communism. By the way, with the fall of the Soviet Union and its financial support, these rebels, whom Trudeau supported, changed their economy to hostage taking and drugs.
Note that Trudeau, while he supported these attempts at moving into communism, and his turning his back on the US, did nothing to enable Canada to move out of its economic dependency on the US consumer. He didn’t enable the devt of a Canadian investor class.
Lberia The Proof is da Proof
Why is it we spend most of are debating time with Liberal dogmatists educating them? They have a historic record that starts in 1985 .
ET:
“That’s reality, not opinion.”
Links to studies or documents, ie. facts, that’s proof. Otherwise it’s just your opinion. Just because you think it’s reality doesn’t make it so. Come on, put your money where your mouth is.
Oh, so now, you won’t accept my pointing to factual data as proof. You want me to cut and paste the material, or fax it to you, put it in front of your nose – and even read it to you?
lberia, my lazy little communist friend – you are going to have to do some work on your own. I’ve provided the terms:
NEP and its effects
Charter of Rights
Bilingualism and Multiculturalism
Canada’s taxation structure
Number of Investor Class Canadians
Ratio of Foreign owned businesses
Ratio of foreign franchises
Ratio of Canadian patents and innovations vs US or European
Percentage of exports to US
Trudeau’s comments (1968) on Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, on USA and Europe and NATO
Trudeau and his changing Canadian foreign policy to focus on Latin America
Do some work, lberia. Look it up yourself. And don’t say a word about your communist friend (Trudeau) without supplying similar key terms.
Aaron at 9:49 pm Sept. 22.
You are not correct about the bowdlerized English version of “O Canada” happening under Trudeau. The English version penned by Justice Weir in 1908 was pretty much the same version as we sing today; only minor changes were made in 1972. An English version produced around 1906 attempted to capture some of the stirring message of the French version, but it did not survive the arrival of the Weir version in 1908.
But you were pretty much bang on about the English translation of the version still sung in French today.
From the very site linked by the mocking lberia:
“O Canada! Land of our forefathers
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As is thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic of the most brilliant exploits.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.”
The Bible is a very socialist doctrine. Teachers teach to respect one another and to be kind to thy neighbour. If that’s socialism I’m all for it.
“Good people who don’t speak out promote evil”