HANNAFORD: Note to the PM... it's NOT 2015 any more

It’s not going to work.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can caper and prance all he likes at a community festival, and issue insipid Canada Day statements about reconciliation and being stronger because of our differences and try to look sincere, but it’s not going to work.Why?Because it’s not 2015.Yes, all the frat boy stuff did work nine years ago, with a comfortable, easygoing electorate. That, and the cheap insincerities of political correctness were taken by many as a captivating change of style in 2015, after almost ten years of Stephen Harper’s (supposedly) unsmiling emphasis on ‘good government.’ (It was nothing of the sort, of course. Harper just took the job seriously.)However, Canadians have now tasted the fruit of nine years of lightness and frolics (not to mention gross ethics violations) and found the hypocrisy bitter to the taste. (It may have been ‘2015,’ but in the end it didn’t help Jody Raybould-Wilson.)The hypocrisy then, and the Trudeau government’s failure to control the cost of living. .HANNAFORD: Finance Minister Freeland's Capital Gains Tax: A Move for Intergenerational Fairness?.As economist Jack Mintz commented in an interview on the (new) Hannaford show, to retain equivalent purchasing power any person earning $100,000 in 2022 needs to be earning more than $115,000 today, just 18 months later. Meanwhile, compounding inflation means grocery costs are up more than 20 percent, not the 2.7 percent reported in May.So much for the sunny ways of 2015. The fact that some people are still doing alright should not blind us to the fact that an awful lot of Canadians have taken an economic nosedive; inflation and the cost of just having a home are killing them.Their plight is the consequence of their country being in the hands of somebody who does not merely admit, but rather boasts, that he should ‘be forgiven if he doesn’t think much about monetary policy.’ (47 second mark on the video.)Dear heavens, it’s like somebody explaining at the scene of their accident, ‘you’ll forgive me I don’t think much about learning to drive.’Where after all did inflation come from? Answer, government borrowing and the insidious effects of a carbon tax, that layers on extra cost at every stage of production from raw material to packaged product.Why did the government borrow? Answer, they’ll tell you it was because they ‘had your back’ during COVID. In fact, that was just an excuse to throw money around in ways calculated to buy votes.And why the carbon tax? It’s supposed to make us use less fuel and save the planet. Good luck, while other countries are ramping up power generation as they try to match (and in some cases exceed) Canada’s standard of living. But this prime minister can’t hear that.Homeless, can’t buy and can’t rent either? That would be a mix of government borrowing as above, and unsupervised and unrestrained immigration.Canadians have had enough. For those who missed it before, the voters of Toronto-St. Paul’s brought it to the front burner on June 24th by trashing a Liberal safe seat and sending a Conservative to Parliament..FORSETH: Trudeau promises 'more work to do' after byelection loss.Meanwhile, the prime minister himself seems to remain in some kind of denial. Certainly, he shows no sign of taking one for the team.Indeed, those who have argued — myself among them — that he will use the remaining time in his mandate to do everything he ever dreamed of, may yet be proved right.And be horrified; the Conservative opposition Wednesday morning asserted that Trudeau held a ‘private town hall’ with activists calling for taxes on the equity that Canadians have in their homes. (They deny it, but the story keeps coming back. .MORGAN: Trudeau has his eyes on your home equity.Intriguingly, this meeting was apparently omitted from the PM’s official itinerary.)No, the jig is up. (So to speak.) If Prime Minister thinks that what worked in 2015 will work for the next election, he should think again. The 2024-5 electorate is neither comfortable, nor easy-going.

HANNAFORD: Note to the PM... it's NOT 2015 any more

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