Jagmeet's Fake, Plastic Leadership

On The NDP

Put aside whether or not the Bank of Canada is correct in doing what’s it doing, it’s a matter of fact at this point that the Bank is raising interest rates for a reason - to reduce the amount of money in the economy and lower inflation. And now Jagmeet Singh is proposing to undo that through government subsidy, and specifically a handout to homeowners - who, of course, made an investment and are now supposed to be bailed out when the investment came with a trade off.

Singh’s idea would be a massive transfer of wealth to the middle and upper class, there’s no guarantee it would help any renters, and would be another example of governments across this country committing themselves to a policy set that would massively fuck over the young to help out the old.

And then at the same time, the NDP’s Twitter account is blaming rent increases on the Federal Government, which (of course) is only in office on Jagmeet’s votes. So, once again I have to implore the NDP of a very basic concept.

Either vote against this government and force an election or depose Jagmeet as leader and stay in the Confidence and Supply Agreement, because this fucking farce has to fucking end.

…

The NDP could, whenever Parliament sits again, force an election with a fair bit of expediency. If they genuinely believe that Justin Trudeau is responsible for rent rises of 60%, it’s their moral obligation to call an election and stop propping up a government they so obviously find lacking. But, of course, they won’t do that, because for all their lies and deceits, they don’t actually care, so they’re willing to lie to Canadians and pretend that they’re too stupid to realize they’re being lied to.

Look, if the NDP would like to win 0 seats at the next election, pushing for this mortgage holders bonus would be the best way to do it, because they’ll get no credit from suburbanites who own but also know how First Past The Post works and they’ll lose the vote of every under-40 who looks at homeowners as the beneficiaries of a rigged system that he’s continuing to rig against them. Oh, and the mortgage “crisis” (remember, higher inflation reduces the value of the debt of the borrower, so it’s not uniformly bad news for owners) is concentrated in the cities and suburbs, which means that if you’re a homeowner in Skeena or Kootenay, you won’t be up for nearly the benefit and therefore get little of the relief, which urban and suburban homeowners would rake in thousands.

Now, the policy’s never going to be enacted, so it is on some level fundamentally stupid to engage with it, but this is the NDP’s whole deal, essentially - a policy platform designed not to help Canadians but to help the NDP pretend they give a shit about people while not doing any of the hard work of actually having to make anybody’s lives better. The act of governing is hard, the act of politicking is easy, and Jagmeet’s NDP have proven themselves to be more concerned with the latter than the former. They’re a joke, but more than that, they treat us like we’re too stupid to function, and certainly too stupid to notice.

As I write this up, I’m currently watching the Open Championship, my favourite sporting event of the year, and I’m thinking about the role it’s had in my life as a totem, as a signal, as a constancy and a marker. I struggled for most of my life with internal crises, and the Open always was a reprieve for 4 days. I didn’t have to be Evan Scrimshaw, with all that meant to me at the time of my life I was in. I could just be a guy whose only focus was on whether Jordan Spieth could get his irons in tight on Saturday at the Old Course.

The reason I hate Jagmeet is that during those many years of pain, I was so desperate for any hope I sought out any number of sources of false comfort, addicted to the sugar high of not actively hurting at any given moment, but it was always bad, and the fall was always worse. Jagmeet is but a politician’s version of this, always promising the unbelievable as the possible and then pointing to Justin Trudeau and saying “he’s so terrible for not doing this, if only I had more power”. It’s a lie, and it’s one he makes a new version of as often as I sought and found false comfort.

Jagmeet is lying to Canadians – a meaningful mortgage bonus would be astronomically expensive and completely unworkable at scale, and he knows it, just as he knows that the Liberals are not responsible for 60% rises in rent in Windsor when rent control is provincial jurisdiction and the feds have almost no direct housebuilding levers. We know he’s lying, because when he did this song and dance about the health care industry last fall and through the winter, it was repeatedly pointed out to him that he was being at best deeply dishonest and they never stopped. But don’t worry, this time I’m sure they’re telling the … honestly, I can’t even finish the sentence, even sarcastically.

I get accused of being a Liberal shill more and more these days, and I get why even though I vigorously disagree. I voted for this man’s party in 2021 and it is the most shameful thing I’ve done with my franchise. He embarrasses me on a near daily basis, and the way he treats basic concepts of our democracy is a national disgrace. Every time I write about him I get people defending him on the basis that he’s a good person, as if that is supposed to make up for the fact that he is poisoning our populace with cheap lies and fake ideas that he either knows would kill this country or is too stupid to be able to spot as such.

Jagmeet’s latest nonsense underlines why he must go as NDP leader, because anyone who so blatantly misleads Canadians cannot be fit to lead them. As a party, the NDP is teetering on the edge of a full crisis, because this ambiguity where they hate a government they actively prop up on a daily basis is bordering on fraud.

Right now, Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees is playing, one of their best songs and a song that means a lot to me, as it served as the introduction to my fandom. In Jagmeet Singh, the NDP have found a fake, plastic leader, someone so pathetically divorced from either sanity or honesty that he must go. And every day he continues to lie is a day our country gets further away from its best ideal.