MORGAN: Look inside yourself Canada

Sleight of hand requires a distraction. A magician will bring the attention of the audience to the side of the stage while he prepares to deceive their eyes with the other hand. It was the prime role of a magician's assistant aside from being cut in half. If people remain focused on the performer, the trick will fail.The only hope the Liberals had of retaining power was to have a distraction so massive, the public would forget about ten years of terrible governance before heading into an election. In igniting an unprecedented and unfair trade war, Donald Trump gave the Liberals the gift that keeps on giving. Trump has become Carney's magician's assistant. Whenever the Liberal record comes up, they point to Donald Trump. Whenever Poilievre makes a good political point, the Liberals compare him to Trump and then steal Poilievre’s policy.Another violent offender released on bail? Have a rally waving flags and offering “elbows up” to Trump.News breaks with poor economic news? Dig up an interview from weeks ago with Premier Smith and an American outlet and claim it somehow brings Poilievre closer to Trump.It doesn’t matter how unrelated to Trump an issue may be, the Liberals will try to tie it to the Conservatives and Canada’s legacy media outlets will happily indulge them. Canada is in for four more weeks of political gotcha games tied to Donald Trump, and the worst part of all is that it's working like a charm.The Liberals are making a speedy political recovery unlike any ever seen. Only a month ago, pollsters couldn’t find one Canadian in five willing to vote for the Liberal party and today, they could be poised to not only win the election, but may win a majority government. Its no longer outlying pollsters reporting this remarkable turnaround. Every pollster is seeing the same thing, and the trend is sustaining.Opportunistic Liberals are returning to the flock they so recently abandoned. Former Liberal cabinet ministers Anita Anand and Sean Fraser both recently said they were leaving public office to spend more time with their families. I guess their families must be terrible people to devote more time to, since both Anand and Fraser have decided to jump back into the political fray. It couldn’t have anything to do with the new polling numbers, could it? The cynical, self-serving actions of Liberals don’t bother Canadian voters, however.Edmonton Mayor Sohi has taken a five-week leave of absence to run for the Liberals. He had already stated he won’t be running again for the position of mayor this fall, but he won’t resign because he wants to continue to collect a paycheque for a few months in case he doesn’t win the federal seat. Will this greedy man be rewarded by Edmonton voters with a federal seat? Perhaps.People instinctively rally around their current leadership when presented with an outside threat. It’s a good survival instinct developed over thousands of years of tribal warfare. When your community is threatened, you cluster together and set aside differences until the threat is resolved. Through fluke and years of opportunistic political machinations, the Liberals happened to be in power when Trump decided to challenge Canada’s sovereignty as a nation with insulting jibes about turning the country into the 51st state while imposing economically devastating tariffs. The Liberals were given an opportunity and they are making the most of it.Are Canadians really that obtuse?Is Canada really that easily distracted and willing to overlook so many years of terrible governance?Canadians must look beyond the distraction and look at the record of the government before casting their ballots.Look at the doubling of the national debt. The explosion of overdoses after the decriminalization of hard drugs. The constant embarrassments overseas. The decline of the military and the rise of organized crime. The housing crisis and the mass immigration challenges. The rising cost of living while the GDP per capita has remained stagnant for a decade. The list is of government failures is extensive while successes are impossible to find.Donald Trump couldn’t care less who the prime minister of Canada is. He has his own agenda whatever it is, and it won’t change no matter who Canadians choose in the election. Yes, the next prime minister will have to deal with the trade war, but let’s not pretend Trump will respect one leader more or less than another.With that in mind, Canadians must vote based on government performance and current issues.If Canadians can’t see beyond today’s distractions and reward yesterday’s government with another term in office, perhaps the country doesn’t deserve sovereignty. Maybe the nation truly is too weak and shallow to be sustained and its ironic that it will be a surge of domestic jingoism bringing it to an end.The appetite for independence has been rising in Quebec and the election of another Liberal government will cause an explosion of independence sentiment in Alberta. People will realize the only way to fix Canada –and it is broken — will be to break it up and work to rebuild parts of it or all of it from there. This is the most important election in generations. Look inside yourselves Canadians. Look inside yourselves.

MORGAN: Look inside yourself Canada

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