Juno News - Canada needs a real leader

00:00:00.000 In all the parks and all the cities in all the world, there is not one statue

00:00:09.120 erected to a committee. The quote is often attributed to Winston Churchill, but I

00:00:14.520 suspect it traces back to a quote by British writer G.K. Chesterton who said,

00:00:19.720 I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of

00:00:23.760 committees. But whoever originated the quote, the meaning is clear. Leadership

00:00:29.440 matters. It matters to get anything accomplished. After cavorting around

00:00:33.700 Africa and Europe for a couple of weeks and ignoring the rail blockades and

00:00:38.260 protests in Canada, encouraging dialogue and saying that his government did not

00:00:43.360 tell the RCMP what to do, the Prime Minister finally returned back to Canada

00:00:48.280 on the weekend. While no one, let alone veteran members of the RCMP, believe that,

00:00:53.380 members are constantly told that their commanders have to check with Ottawa to

00:00:58.040 make a decision, to get anything done. Now after three days of meeting with his

00:01:03.500 lightweight group of sycophantic cabinet ministers dubbed the Incident Response

00:01:09.740 Group, the Prime Minister has decided that the barricades must come down.

00:01:14.760 Essentially, he said the same thing on Friday at his press conference that Andrew

00:01:19.280 Scheer said in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Comments that Trudeau decried and

00:01:24.200 used it as an excuse to decline to invite Scheer to a meeting of all party leaders

00:01:29.660 to discuss the developing situation. Hypocrisy, apparently thy name is Trudeau.

00:01:35.540 Anyway, to be fair, it also took a conference call amongst all of the Premiers on

00:01:41.060 Wednesday to discuss their response after the PMO suggested it was up to the

00:01:45.620 provinces to determine how to deal with the blockades. On Thursday, Quebec Premier

00:01:52.160 Francois Legault called upon the Prime Minister to put an end to the blockades

00:01:56.780 and put a finite date on that. Well, that did it. One word from Quebec and Trudeau

00:02:04.100 jumps. He held a press conference late Friday saying the blockades must come down.

00:02:10.040 But after saying his government didn't control the National Police Force just days

00:02:15.680 earlier, he didn't say just exactly how that might occur if the so-called

00:02:21.020 protesters declined his kind invitation. He was asked if he might use the

00:02:27.860 military and he said something to the effect that the military would never be

00:02:33.680 used against Canadians, conveniently forgetting the fact that his father

00:02:37.800 imposed martial law on the country during the October crisis of 1970 and deploy the

00:02:44.520 military to the streets of Montreal. So far, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Luckey has

00:02:50.400 shown precious little leadership from her end of things. There is little to

00:02:56.460 indicate she has any appetite to confront the protesters and one wonders if she has

00:03:01.200 the intestinal fortitude to give the requisite order to enforce injunctions and

00:03:06.240 take down the barricades and get the economy moving again.

00:03:12.420 It's not clear how any of this will end, but end it must. If only we had a real leader

00:03:19.200 somewhere.

Juno News - February 22, 2020