Trudeau's Great Canadian Divide
Post 45 | Fanning the flames of division and hostility...between Canadians
Throughout human history leaders have loved for their citizens to be at odds with each other. The King and Queen would look over the castle walls and see the people fighting with each other and they’d high five and say “this is great because we know they’re not coming over the walls after us”. Anytime there is a population that agrees on something, the government is in great peril.
Gavin De Becker (paraphrased from Mike Rowe’s “The Way I Heard It” podcast)
(What follows is a satirical imagining of Justin Trudeau leading a Zoom call with his brain trust of young idealogues from the Liberal strategy group and PMO. Let’s call this a work of fiction, “Based on a True Story”)
[Cue scene]
Hey gang. Hope you all had a great weekend lecturing your friends and neighbours about climate change, diversity and Canada’s colonial sins. I was off frittering away Canada’s money on another pointless international junket – uh, I frankly can’t remember even what it was. But I’m thinking of giving away another $75 million for gender affirming care of French bulldogs in Zimbabwe – it’s a priority you know.
[Eyes light up and heads nod vigorously at this incredible new waste of money]
Anyway, uh, don’t worry this meeting won’t take long, so you can get back to surfing cat videos on your couch for the rest of the day.
But, as an aside, I was thinking it would be great to have an in person meeting sometime this year. Like, in the office together. Remember that? Anyone? Anyone?
[Furrowed brows, panicked looks and audible gasps]
Oh, but hey – let’s park that idea because we don’t want to trigger anyone.
[Everyone relaxes and puts aside their government issued, fair trade hyperventilation bags]
We recognize how hard you all work already and how much stress you’re under compared to those boring average Canadians out there who deliver your packages, teach your kids, serve you at restaurants, build the roads you drive on with your saintly EVs, manufacture all the stuff you patriotically consume to keep our economy afloat and do all the other gross work those kinds of people do. Can you imagine some people - and someone told me it’s mostly guys - choose to work in mines, on oil rigs, in fields, building houses and all that kind of dirty and dangerous stuff?
I don’t know why they don’t all just learn to program - or run for office.
[Laughs and smiles all around]
Believe me I get the need to work in a tolerant, non-toxic, enabling and coddling environment. Whenever I don’t have to be getting beat up in Question Period by that bully, Pierre, I prefer to be jetting off somewhere with a plane load of adorers and ringing up $220,000 catering tabs. But hey, it’s only Canada’s money and it’s not my job to think about it. Besides, Mary Simon still spends more than me and she’s not nearly as important - and still can’t speak French.
But I also spend a lot of my free time playing online chess with this really cool person Xi, while we online chat. Xi seems really nice and is super interested in hearing about some of Canada’s secret stuff. I think I could have a new bestie, if I share more.
[Nods of approval all round]
But hey listen, uh, the reason I wanted to get together was because I’m starting to get the feeling that not everyone loves me quite as much as 2015. It really sucks.
[Quizzical looks]
I know it surprises me too, uh - cause I think we’ve been doing such a super great job giving away more money than any time in Canadian history - though I’m doing my best to rewrite that - and polarizing the country like never before.
But I have a lot more money to give and so much more tearing down to do - so don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere til they drag me out by my ears.
[Relieved nods]
We need to launch a new strategy. I’m calling it “Divide Canada Even Further” and this meeting will get it kicked off with some of my newest ideas.
[Excited looks]
As you know we’ve done a spectacular job of creating tension in the country by race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. I’m confident we can figure out a few new letters to add to the 2SLGBTQIA+ alphabet, but it does seem to be losing a bit of steam and I think some people are catching on to our scam.
[Reluctant nods]
Good news though is we’ve still got some life left in the whole indigenous and evil colonialism thing, but I’m worried I might have overplayed my hand with that kneeling teddy bear and cultural genocide move. But, hey shoot me, I’m a drama guy so I can’t help myself.
[Agreeable smiles]
Good news is we made up some traction dividing the country by industry, mainly beating up those dirty oil & gas guys. Yeah - blah, blah, blah - it produces lots of revenue, allows us to eat, cloth, transport, heat, cool and house ourselves. And it helped build us into the post-national farce, er force we are today – er, uh, well at least when I inherited the place it was supposedly in decent shape. But I wasn’t really paying attention and those details are soooo boring.
Anyway, I’m proud of you all for really amping up climate alarmism the past few years to further pit Canadians against each other - you know, between the true believers and the deniers.
Look, I don’t really understand most of this net zero stuff or those computer models that drive it all - but my friends Tedros and Klaus assure me we’re doing the right thing by killing oil & gas, and putting everyone into windup cars, running off an aging electric grid. What could possibly go wrong, right?
Steven is totally jazzed up about it. And lots of really rich and important people like Al, John, Leo and Greta are texting me regularly that Canada still has so much more to give, so don’t let up on the gas [giggle].
[Mad applause]
This religion thing has been a hard one to figure out though, but I think I’m doing a great job – particularly with all those nice Hamas supporters. Gosh they really seem to care about Palestine, wherever that is, don’t they?
My pal Mel is doing a great job saying nothing that would help Israel - she’s super good at saying nothing - so I think she’s leaving all Canadian Jews scratching their heads wondering if we’re just incompetent or really don’t care about them. Heck if I know.
And you know we’ve done our thing for the Sikh community by publicly calling out India for going Tony Soprano on us - but I think I might have oopsed on that one a bit cause Narendra is super pissed at me.
As for the Catholics, well, let the Conservatives have them. They’re so uptight and non-progressive. They actually still believe we’re born as boys and girls. Can you imagine?
[Euphoric clapping – like Justin at a women’s hockey game]
Most people thought Covid sucked, but I loved it because I got to run things like a kingdom for a while. Canadians were so scared we could’ve got them to jump up and down on one leg singing show tunes if we told them it was going to keep them safe. We figured out pretty fast that “keeping Canadians safe” was a winner message.
But the best part about Covid was it helped me start a new divisiveness - by class this time. You remember those disgusting truckers – yeh, those guys that haul your stuff all over the country so you can poke a button with your soft little fingers and it magically shows up at your door? Apparently they didn’t like the choice of being undemocratically forced to take a poorly tested vaccine or lose two weeks of pay while they were quarantined every time they crossed the border with truckloads of our stuff. What losers, right? Why couldn’t they just fall in line like everyone else?
[Nods of agreement while reflexively tightening masks]
Well, anyhooo, that helped me start road testing [cackle] some messaging to divide those blue collar truckers from all us civilized people - by calling them anti-vaxxers, and declaring what was acceptable and unacceptable. I thought I did a really cool job on that - sorta felt like I was a king telling his subjects what to think. Oh wait, I am king right?
[Hearty chuckles all around]
I’ll admit, it’s making it a bit hard to now pretend we care about fairness for the average Canadian since we obviously don’t - or frankly even know who they are, cause “average Canadian” is just a meaningless term we use. But fortunately everyone forgets things really quick.
And you remember our awesome messaging about it being a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”? Well, that worked great to make people hate each other – except now people with twenty-six jabs are still getting this darn virus. Oh well, at least it got the ball rolling on more political wedging.
[Vigorous nods]
Speaking of messaging, I have to say I was soooo proud of my gal pal Chrystia for her super messaging on the capital gains inclusion rate increase. Hey, don’t worry if you don’t understand it – I don’t either. All I know is it gives us a way to pit the rich against the poor and talk all about fairness - yeah right [eye roll]. We know perfectly well that talking point about it impacting only 0.1% is total nonsense, but helps us collect tax money early and pay for all the stuff that irritating Jagmeet keeps demanding.
It’s kinda like a Ponzi scheme but legal, because we’re the government.
Just so you know, by the way, I’m not considered rich because I live in a separate, entitled world of trust fund kids and political royalty.
[Knowing nods of agreement]
Now, uh, of course we could, uh, just stop spending, uh, and try to actually grow the economy, uh, but Klaus tells me this income redistribution thing is way less work and much better…for someone or other. And Chrystia even wrote a book about it called “Plutocrats”. Yeah, did you know she was a journalist with a degree in history and literature before I gave her the top job of ruining, er, I mean running our country’s finances? What a perfect background to be Finance Minister.
[Everyone applauds while tilting their heads in Freeland fashion]
That line she delivered a couple weeks ago was dynamite? I mean, seriously, her literature degree came in really handy -- “Do you want to be in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury but must do so in gated communities behind ever higher fences using private health care and airplanes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their less privileged compatriots burns so hot?”
Wow, that was more over-the-top than some of my best stuff.
Bring on class warfare, right?
[Swooning]
[Justin turns to take a selfie in front of the screenful of adoring acolytes]
And this whole fairness schtick is now helping us divide young against old, because all those generations before us that risked capital and built this post-national nirvana are now pretty old and decrepit and we don’t need them anymore. So let’s strip them of everything and hope for another pandemic so we can lock them away to die alone in nursing homes.
[Nodding agreement]
But here’s the problem, I’m not sure we can turn over enough new rocks to find people who love me as much as they used to. So, uh, we really need some fresh meat.
Well, can you imagine how relieved I was that Stats Canada just announced we added another 242,000 people to Canada in just three months!? That pushes us over 41 million people we can’t properly house, employ or deliver healthcare to – how exciting, right?
[Big smiles]
Even better, almost half the new people are permanent residents so they’ll be voters we can divide, er, I mean welcome.
Bummer that fourteen thousand people also left Canada in the first three months of the year – not sure why they’d leave with life being so great and affordable in this so-called country that I’ve never believed in. And did you know 42,000 have moved to the US alone since 2022?
But they’re probably all Conservatives anyway so we won’t miss them, right?
[Wild applause]
So let’s go hard after these new arrivals with the whole package of division – ethnicity, gender, race, religion, industry, class, climate, ageism. Go big, people!
[Wilder applause]
[Justin, now uses his best drama sotto voce as he takes it down a notch, while the crowd wipes tears from their eyes]
But we have so much more to do. And I’ve been thinking about this really, really hard.
[Justin punches up the volume]
I think what Canada needs is MORE division!
Let’s start building divisive messaging around hair colour – brunette versus blonde…and don’t even get me started on redheads.
Let’s pit short people against tall people – we can easily manipulate some grievances for each of them. Short people have to get their pants hemmed and tall people bump their heads when they get on airplanes - well, those economy class shleps anyway.
And for sure we have to go after eyesight - glasses, contact lenses or 20/20 vision. There’s a new universal healthcare program in there somewhere and we can start to rev everyone up about how all those people with perfect eyesight are naturally privileged.
But I think we can get even more creative.
[Tension builds]
Let’s separate people based on how many push ups they can do. Better yet, about how many pull ups they can do. Only those genetically lucky, cisgender guys can do ten pull ups – I mean talk about inequality. Unless of course they identify now as women and enter women’s sporting events, in which case they’re off the hook.
[Matter of fact looks all around]
But my personal fav is going to be built around socks. Socks versus no socks is a start. But mainly comparing those of us who wear fun and colourful socks and all those blue and black soxers like Pierre. Booorrring. After all, we’re giving Canadians so much joy with our whimsy and we should be rewarded for it.
[Audible gasps of delight]
So you see gang, these are just a few of my favorite things [done in Julie Andrews singsong] to consider. But there are likely hundreds more ways we can divide Canadians.
But, uh, hey I know that was a lot to digest. So let’s call it a week here on Monday at 11 and just bum around as usual until next Monday. We’ll pick it up again then at the same time – assuming that’s okay with everyone? If anyone is feeling burned out after a couple hours of work next Monday feel free to take the day off.
But you’ll miss a doozy because we’re going to strategize on new ways to manipulate that dupe, er I mean my friend, Jagmeet. He’s getting really close to his February MP pension vesting date so I’m worried he might actually grow a pair and do something dumb like force an election. So we need to figure out a few more goodies to throw his way and keep him happy - like maybe that universal eyecare thing.
Above all, the most important thing is we keep stringing out our days in power. Oh, just ignore all that talk about our GDP, productivity, foreign interference, debt and everything else. Those people just aren’t magical thinkers like me. They are so stuck in reality.
Besides we’ve got time, because to quote someone really famous from a softball interview on CBC last week – oh wait, that was me - “Canadians aren’t in decision mode yet”. Yah, can you believe the interviewer let me get away with that line? Woohoo - thanks CBC! More money to come if I stay in power.
So put your thinking caps on and let’s keep dividing Canada until it’s nothing more than a husk of itself – because if Canadians are busy hating each other, they won’t have time to realize how badly I’ve f***ed up this whole thing.
[Cut and fade to Canada’s despair…]
Stay tuned and stay pragmatic.
great piece - simultaneously evokes 🤣 / 😭 / 😡
Bye Troodas. You are Canada's existential and fatal mistake. May the door hit you on the way out for what you did to us.