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Justin Trudeau Blasted for Pro-Quebec / Anti-Western Canada Comment

This is the 2nd time in recent memory where Justin Trudeau has messed up. If this keeps up, people are really going to start to question his aptitude, intelligence, and wisdom as a potential leader of the country.

As Canadians in the west coast, I think we ought to take this into consideration in the back of our minds...

Justin Trudeau blasted for defending senate

Quote:

OTTAWA — Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who has surged into first place in opinion polls, was hammered by opponents Sunday for arguing Canada should keep the Senate because it gives Quebec a big advantage over B.C. and Alberta.

“We have 24 senators from Quebec and there are just six from Alberta and six from British Columbia. That’s to our advantage,” Trudeau said in response to the new NDP push to have the scandal-plagued $91.5-million-a-year upper chamber abolished.

“To want to abolish it, that’s demagogy. It has to be improved,” he said in a story published Saturday in Montreal’s La Presse newspaper.

Critics accused Trudeau of pitting region against region. But Trudeau, in an interview with The Vancouver Sun late Sunday, said it was the Conservatives that were harming western interests by pushing for Senate reforms that merely allow for election of senators.

“Justin Trudeau is tone deaf to western Canadians,” Heritage Minister James Moore, B.C.’s senior minister in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, told The Sun in a statement. “This isn’t the first time he has insulted the West, it won’t be the last.”

NDP House leader Nathan Cullen said Trudeau’s comments will get a “terrible” reception in the West.

“Mr. Trudeau has made so much about being a unifying figure, so to defend something so indefensible as the Senate under the guise that ‘it’s better for the place where I live’ speaks to the worst motivations,” said Cullen, MP for the northwestern B.C. riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley. “That’s not unifying. That’s pitting one (region) against another.”

Trudeau said it is Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives who want to hurt B.C. and Alberta by pushing to create an elected Senate without making other changes.

Giving senators additional democratic legitimacy by electing them will make the Senate more powerful. Unless the seat distribution is changed, Trudeau said, that will hurt B.C. and Alberta which are grossly under-represented in the Senate given their populations and economic clout.

“Electing senators will have a terrible impact on the West,” Trudeau told The Sun.

The Canadian Constitution gives B.C. and Alberta only six senators each of the total of 105, while guaranteeing New Brunswick and Nova Scotia 10 senators each.

Trudeau also said he had no apologies for pointing out the current Senate’s benefit for his home province.

“I’m looking out for the interests of all Canadians, there’s no question about that, but I’m not going to make apologies for being very serious about protecting minorities in this country, whether they be linguistic minorities like anglophones in Quebec or francophones outside of Quebec, or even Quebec as a province.”

He also said it’s not a “big deal” that a national leader would refer to Quebec’s interests as “our” interests while speaking to a Quebec newspaper.

“Politicians are from places and usually if they are a good politician they’re proud of where they’re from,” he said, noting that Harper has proclaimed Calgary as Canada’s top city while Moore promoted B.C. during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Trudeau made his original comments in La Presse in response to NDP leader Tom Mulcair’s campaign to abolish the Senate in light of the Senate expenses scandal that has ensnared Harper after Harper’s then chief of staff Nigel Wright’s gave $90,000 of his own money to Tory Senator Mike Duffy so that Duffy could repay questionable expense payments.

Trudeau, citing good work by senators like Liberal Romeo Dallaire, told La Presse that it would be better to “improve” rather than get rid of the Senate.

Trudeau, whose party has only eight Quebec seats in the House of Commons compared to the NDP’s 57, has surged to first place in polls in both Quebec and across Canada.

Liberal MP Joyce Murray, one of two Liberal MPs in B.C. (there are none in Alberta), defended Trudeau’s comments.

“I think (the NDP) are pandering to people who are upset about the scandal,” said Murray, MP for Vancouver Quadra, in an interview. She said that while spending abuses are not acceptable, the Senate does important work when it’s working well.

“(Trudeau) is a francophone Canadian and at some level he’s saying that it’s demagogy for francophones, of whom he is one, to jump on this bandwagon when they know full well it is an advantage to their province. He is a francophone, why wouldn’t he say it like that?”

She subsequently sent an email noting that she recognizes B.C. and Alberta are disadvantaged in the Senate and, like Trudeau, argued that Harper and Moore are hurting their home provinces by favouring an elected Senate with no change in seat distribution.

Quebec’s 24 seats in the Senate represent a proportion of the upper chamber seats in line with the province’s share of the national population. Atlantic Canada, however, has 30 of the 105 seats despite having just seven per cent of the population.

I think the Cons and their tyranny is much more of a concern than Trudeau making the odd remark in support of Quebec to a Quebec newspaper its what politicians do

QUOTE=Traum;8246837]This is the 2nd time in recent memory where Justin Trudeau has messed up. If this keeps up, people are really going to start to question his aptitude, intelligence, and wisdom as a potential leader of the country.

As Canadians in the west coast, I think we ought to take this into consideration in the back of our minds...

Any thinking Cdn who has not already seen that he lacks the ability to lead Canada, should finally take a look & listen. He continues to show what he really is about and what he lacks but many want him to be Pierre soooooooo bad that they continue to let him say what he wants and let him off the hook. His handlers try to hush his gaffes up and stamp out the fires he starts & they may eventually get him to perform as they wish....but Cdn voters should listen now as he lets us know what he really is all about.

I'm less concerned about what Trudeau has to say than the current disproportionate number of seats representing each province. The fact that New Brunswick gets 10 senators while running a population of less than 800,000 and BC gets only 6 with a population of over 4 million is appalling. Alberta is in the same boat as well. There needs to be a major reform in how power is distributed, though I realize that is rather hard to do given the amount of times in the past it's been attempted.

I hate Quebec. Hear me Quebec? Your bullshit? Makes me dislike you.

First, I'm tired of having to have politicians that are Quebec focused and have a quebec plan and quebec quebec quebec.

So I will say, in a very tolerate/dislike relationship with the Conservatives, I will give them one good solid point: their platform is pretty much 'fuck Quebec'. Sure, they don't say that in the papers(a tip Trudeau should heed) and he learned a little french. They throw a bone every once and awhile to the people there, but they are pretty much the fuck quebec party.

Trudeau right now is running on his last name. Pretty soon, he's going to have to back that up.

No one wants the conservatives in power. They aren't doing what we thought we were getting-good fiscal leadership. We're getting jets and prisons and thats got to cost a few dollars. Billions you say? We get reduced environmental regulations so conservative feel good projects can have an easier time for decades getting approval? Right. A nice legacy touch.

People want the liberals to get their shit together, so we can go back to voting for them. Put the Conservatives into a good opposition status with the NDP back at 30 seats.

On senate reform? Calling for abolishing the senate is a waste. It needs to be an elected house that can actually have some teeth against a runaway majority government. The NDP is out of touch on the issue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lomac (Post 8246967)

I'm from Atlantic Canada.

Here's why. Everyone else doesn't need the extra representation. I do agree that BC's numbers seem small compared to population but here's a little background on what happens when you live in a have not province.

In everything, despite name, it gets treated as a region. So a win for PEI is seen as a win for all. The number of MP's and Senators are set by some special rules in the constitution that guarantee the amount of representation independent of population.

The idea being that without it, Atlantic Canada would be forgotten about, and left behind. Especially in a world where your connection to the country is through Quebec.

No one is going to forget BC, or Alberta in the same way.

This comes up all the time...every election really. In the next federal election they added a bunch of seats to BC, Alberta and Ontario(at a huge cost to pay them, and pension them) to balance things out more.

Sort of off topic...

BC often gets grouped in with the Prairie provinces as "The West". Do you guys think that's a fair observation? When it comes to fiscal and and social issues, the coastal regions of BC are quite different from the rest of the west.

I for one believe that the Senate should be abolished. They have completely no accountability and is more harm than good.

A lot of good points here for discussion.

@StylinRed:
I've been voting for the Conservatives in the last 3 federal election, and I share your sentiments that the Conservatives have become too full of themselves, and their tyranny is getting out of hand. I have no idea who I plan on voting for in the next federal election, but I'd say it looks like I'd have to see which apple is the least rotten one when the time comes. In the past 3 elections, it was a very clear and easy choice for me.

@zulutango and Gridlock
You are so correct that people are just wishing Justin would become the next Pierre, and on a personal level, Justin certainly has his old man's charms and charisma. But from what I can see so far, he is failing left, right, and center on the political front and on his capabilities.

@Gridlock
Quebec is a great and beautiful province, but I fxxking those Quebecois who think Quebec should deserve special treatment just because they are Quebec. I am fxxking sick of the part of Quebec that keeps acting like a spoiled brat, threatening to leave confederation when the real agenda is to milk the federal government for all they can. If Quebec fxxking wants to leave confederation, do it already and we'll see who misses the other party more!

@BurnoutBinLaden
Interesting observation that you have. My personal take is that Alberta and BC always get treated a little different than the rest of the country, and we represent 2 distinct flavours of "the West". I was taught in school that the Prairies include Alberta, Saskachewan, and Manitoba. But since growing up, I've found that Alberta is really only 1/2 a Prairies province.

A lack of integrety, honesty and ability has never prevented a Quebecer from becoming PM in the past. JT just continues the pandering and the blackmail against english Canada.

Next time they start whining, Canada may call their bluff,...and if Canada is divisible, so is Quebec...so be ready for the First nations to divide and separate from Quebec's separatists.

It's not that I'm a Quebec basher as I have lived in Montreal for about a year. I'm just tired of the spoiled little child of confederation holding our breath till they get their special spoiled way again. Let 'em turn blue.