Justin Trudeau vs the Provinces
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
173.93991
Summary
Andrew Lawton explains why Justin Trudeau is quickly finding himself without friends in Canada, and why the federal election is going to be a referendum on the Prime Minister's carbon tax and carbon pricing scheme. He also explains why there's no guarantee that Canadian voters will vote for him again in 2019.
Transcript
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Well when you look at the map of Canada there's arguably a blue wave unfolding
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across the country with last week's election of Jason Kenney and the United
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Conservative Party to being the majority government in Alberta and it's quite a
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far cry from what was the case in Canada a few years ago you had Liberal
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and New Democrat governments almost across the country with just one lone holdout
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and that was Saskatchewan and now we've got blue blue blue blue blue even in
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Quebec which is arguably the least likely province to have Conservative
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representation now the problem with this is that it's easy for Conservatives with
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a small C across the country to get fairly complacent or overly cocky anyway
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heading into the federal election scheduled to take place in just six
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months time now I'm not saying there shouldn't be some cautious optimism we
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know that Conservatism as a message is certainly unfolding and has a lot of
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champions from Doug Ford in Ontario to now Jason Kenney in Alberta Scott Moe in
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Saskatchewan Blaine Higgs Francois Legault the list goes on but in Canada it's not a
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guarantee that provincial outcomes translate to federal outcomes and vice
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versa in fact when you look at the history of Confederation a lot of the
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times there is specifically an opposing political party at the federal level than
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at the provincial levels in many cases in Canada nothing is guaranteed and a lot
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can change within the next six months but it is interesting how much the federal
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government has really pitted itself against the provinces I covered this last
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week at Osgoode Hall where I still am today for the carbon tax court reference
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case in which the federal government was fighting tooth and nail for its right to
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impose a carbon tax and carbon pricing scheme on provinces that didn't and still do
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not want one and I made the prediction months ago that if Justin Trudeau makes
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the 2019 election about the carbon tax he's going to find that he has no allies
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in the average Canadian who frankly doesn't want to pay for such a carbon tax
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that's the proposition here if Trudeau makes the election about fighting for a
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tax he's going to lose but the other dimension to that is that if Trudeau finds
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himself with no allies in provincial governments even if he does win another
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term in 2019 he's not really going to have any allies to advance his enormous
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policies there are some key issues to watch for in 2019 from carbon tax to
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provincial rights and autonomy to firearms to general cost of living but
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suffice it to say Justin Trudeau is very quickly finding himself without friends