Phill Mendonça-Vieira

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What is the point of the Liberal party?

Here is my problem: why does Justin Trudeau even want to govern anymore?

As I write this, Trudeau is on the verge of stepping down, the dam has broken, his time is up, so fine – but I was thinking about this question six months ago. You can repeat this question for Bonnie Crombie, here in Ontario.

(What does Bonnie Crombie want to do other than cut taxes? We already have a party that likes to cut taxes.)

What do Liberals want to accomplish? What do they want to govern for?

It’s not to do electoral reform. It’s not to expand social assistance. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to expand pharmacare. It’s not to give rights to workers. It’s not to fix the housing crisis. They’re not radically expanding public transit. They’re not breaking up the oligarchies that rule our lives, or reducing inequality. They’ve been reduced to limping along on climate change.

I am extremely thankful for legal weed, the canada child benefit, some modest daycare reform, and I think the carbon tax was a good idea.

I obviously prefer to have them in government than the “destroy everything that is nice and good and reward our cronies” alternative currently on offer.

But why run? What’s the point? What’s the agenda? What else do you want to do while in government?

I could forgive the insufferable smarm these people exhibit at every opportunity if they were competent, if they were good at their jobs, if there were mandarins in smoke filled rooms secretly pulling strings in a game of 4d chess. But it turns out, again and again, that given the ball they fumble it.

Look at the Canada Post strike. Who won from that? If you were going to force workers back to work all along, why wait four weeks? Retailers got screwed, workers got screwed, the government looks bad, and the only winner here is the management at Canada Post, who refused to negotiate because they knew this would happen. Those people will drift off to their next job being able to brag about cowing their union.

All of this just to protect a having subclass of part-time workers who are more exploited than full timers?

There’s no vision for the country. There’s just more of the same, keeping the lights on, protecting the status quo even as everyone agrees that it sucks, it’s untenable, it’s broken.

Is it any wonder that people aren’t excited to go out and vote? YOU NEED TO MAKE PEOPLE EXCITED TO GO OUT AND VOTE.

What is the point of the Liberal party? I have some answers to this question but they’re all unflattering.

# 2025-01-02