His Own Man

The brand-spanking-new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada is finding his feet in the House of Commons as a leader of men and a leading political figure with a huge understanding of economics and international affairs. That handful of the electorate who viewed his royal ascension to the leadership as a crowning event for the Liberals with less than enthusiastic applause were scornful of his lack of political insight, and dismissive of his personality-and-name-appeal.

Justin Trudeau is out to prove his detractors wrong. He has promised to demonstrate unequivocally his intellectual prowess, his grasp of economics, and of international relationships, before he goes off into the Canadian ether to continue wooing and wowing an electorate uncertain that they really want to resurrect the Liberal Party of Canada back to governing status. On his way to doing that he will visit every nook and corner of this great country, raising funds to enable his re-election in 2015.

With, needless to say, a majority. The Conservatives will be humbled, but that is their natural status in life; second-class, following meekly behind the entitled Liberals. This is life in Canada as it is meant to be in the Parliament of Canada. The personable, charmingly attractive Justin will represent his country and ours on the world stage, a leader among leaders.

Meanwhile, on his second day in the House of Commons he lobbed another question at the Prime Minister, re-fashioning, as it were, and re-framing his question of yesterday. To which the Prime Minister responded at that time with an answer that should have sufficed to settle the issue, but which logic appears to have escaped the brilliant thought-processes of the leader of the Liberal Party.

Today's question referred not to little red wagons, school supplies and tricycles for middle-class Canadian children whose parents would be certain to groan under the added weight of yet another 'tax' due to the imposition of an unfavourable tariff on China et al, but to the increased costs of scissors, coffee makers and wigs, imported into Canada as necessary items.

Canada, for the past four decades, as a rich country has recognized its obligations to emerging economies through lower tariffs imposed on their goods under the rubric of "trade not aid", as a form of economic assistance. Most of those countries formerly recognized as developing have ascended to the status of fully-developed - take China, Brazil and Korea, for example, among the 72 countries that Canada extended low tariffs to.

In the latest budget Canada, in its cost-saving wisdom determined that trade-competitive countries were now in a position to pay tariffs faced by all our other "most-favoured nation" countries; and that Canada would "graduate 72 higher-income" nations to match the tariffs of our other friendly trade partners. An estimate of $300-million a year from 2015 to the general receipts of the country would ensue.

While adding costs to the consumer, a kind of tax resulting from imposing higher tariffs on imported goods from countries that have become wealthy enough to send their own satellites into space, and send rockets to the moon. Countries with enough pocket change to spare that they invest billions in Canadian natural resource extraction corporations, for example.

The puzzle here is what does Justin Trudeau expect to glean from his questions aside from responses that point out to him how lacking in economic strategy he is, as an aspiring leader of the country...? Was it his purpose to spurn the prudent advice of his advisers who must surely be wincing every time he opens his mouth in Question Period, to prove he's his own man?

He may now consider that proof has been accepted.