And a Ragged Cheer Went Up from All the Serfs . . .

Today is Tax Freedom Day in Canada! From the National Post:

Three weeks shy of the half way mark for the year, June 6th is Tax Freedom Day for Canadians, according to The Fraser Institute. Thus, once the full working year is complete, we can look back and view all the work performed until June 5th as paying the total tax bill imposed on us by federal, provincial and municipal governments.

And the trend is to working longer to pay still more taxes: June 6th is two days later than Tax Freedom Day 2010, which fell on June 4th.

So it is two days later this year than last. Hmm. . . at that rate we will be working the entire year for the government by, let's see, about 2090. Many of us should be dead by then so that's something.

Will the Conservative government do anything to lower our taxes and increase our freedom? We shall see. I'm inclined to think that they will slow the growth of government, but actually decreasing the size of government is too much to hope for.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau: Canada's Worst Prime Minister

David Frum has a tremendous article in today's National Post on the horrible legacy of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, which makes the case that Trudeau was the most destructive prime minister in Canadian history. It is an illuminating piece that shows how Trudeau in many ways embodied the New Left sensibilities of the 60s and led Canada into a brave new world of debt, statism and a break with tradition and culture. He writes:

Canada today is a very successful country. It has suffered less from the global economic crisis than any other major economy.

So Canadians may be tempted to be philosophical about disasters in their own past. Hasn’t all come out right in the end? Of course you could say the same about the invasions of Ghengis Khan.

I don’t draw any personal comparison between Pierre Trudeau and Ghengis Khan, obviously. But I want to stress: Canada’s achievement overcoming Trudeau’s disastrous legacy should not inure Canadians to how disastrous that legacy was.

Three subsequent important prime ministers – Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper – invested their energies cleaning up the wreckage left by Pierre Trudeau. The work has taken almost 30 years. Finally and at long last, nobody speculates any more about Canada defaulting on its debt, or splitting apart, or being isolated from all its major allies.

Yet through most of the adult lives of most people in this room, people in Canada and outside Canada did worry about those things.

And as you enjoy the peace, stability and comparative prosperity of Canada in the 2010s just consider – this is how Canadians felt in the middle 1960s. Now imagine a political leader coming along and out of ignorance and arrogance despoiling all this success. Not because the leader faced some overwhelming crisis where it was hard to see the right answer. But utterly unnecessarily. Out of a clear blue sky. Like a malicious child on the beach stomping on the sand castle somebody else had worked all morning to build.

That was the political record of Pierre Trudeau.

I want to examine the Trudeau record in 3 dimensions: What Trudeau did to the Canadian economy, what Trudeau did to Canada’s standing in the world, and what Trudeau did to Canadian political stability.

I’ll conclude by offering some thoughts about the personal and intellectual traits that animated Trudeau’s destructive career. And I hope you’ll agree with me at the end that Trudeau deserves at least this much credit: There was nothing small-scale or parochial about him. As a political wrecker, he was truly world class.

I hope you take the time to read the whole thing here. It is one of the most substantial pieces of writing I have seen in a daily newspaper in quite some time.

Frum could have, but didn't mention that it was Trudeau who led the process by which abortion on demand was legalized and homosexuality was normalized. Trudeau was a flower child fascist who was willing to trash tradition in order to implement his statist dreams. Canada is a much different and worse-off place because of him.

Is an Election Brewing in Canada?

Ottawa is buzzing with election talk. John Ivison thinks that the Liberals, NDP and Bloc are plotting to create a coalition government if the election result gives the Conservatives the most seats but not a majority.

I cannot believe Ignatieff and Layton would be so dumb as to pull the plug on Parliament and force an election while openly plotting to form a government which would be dependent on support from a separatist party. In the election campaign they are going to have to deny it (and then turn themselves into liars) or else own up to it and face the fallout.

If they think Ontario will put up with letting separatists hold a gun to the head of the Federal treasury like that, they are wrong - disastrously wrong.

Toronto just elected a conservative mayor and the sky has not fallen yet. The northern half of Toronto and the 905 belt have a lot of seats and voters there may need only an excuse like that provided by the prospect of a coalition of losers and separatists to convince them to vote Conservative.

I predicted a Tory majority in 2010 but no election happened. I predicted one again in 2011. Never has that prediction looked as good as it does today. Go ahead, Layton! Make me a prophet!

Merry Christmas!

Here are some snippets from Ezra Levant's latest terrific Sun column:

Michael Ignatieff’s Christmas card isn’t a Christmas card.

It’s a “holiday” card. It has a Jewish menorah on it, which is great. Fully 1% of Canadians are Jewish and though Hanukkah was three weeks ago, it’s a nice thought.

The card has some snowflakes on it, too, and mittens and a gingerbread man (or a ghost, it’s not clear). Those are symbols of winter. Which is great, because it is winter time.

But there’s not a single Christian symbol on the card, the religion of the majority of Canadians. It’s the faith our Queen Elizabeth is officially the “defender” of, the religion that inspired the names of so many places in this country, from the St. Lawrence Seaway to St. John’s.

It is the religion whose cross adorns the coats of arms of almost every province, the religion from whose Bible comes Canada’s motto, “From sea to sea.” Our anthem asks God to keep our land, and the French version says we will “carry the cross.”

Even the Charter of Rights begins with the reminder that neither judges nor politicians are at the apex of Canadian society, but rather both are under the “supremacy of God.

Then, after discussing how Jack Layton expressed such heartfelt and respectful feelings toward Islam including saying that "we" want to renew the spirit and faith of Islam, Levant ends by saying:

Could you imagine him or Ignatieff or frankly most Conservative MPs saying they want to extend Christ’s blessings throughout Canada? The mainstream media would have an embolism — remember when Stephen Harper dared to say “God Bless Canada” after his speeches — and the Canadian Human Rights Commission would launch a hate-speech investigation.

Canada is a Christian country. Thank God that it is. Because it is precisely that Christian spirit of tolerance and charity that has accepted millions of refugees from countries that are less enlightened — and that don’t value freedom of religion for anyone.

Queen Elizabeth isn’t the only head of state who is also the head of a religious institution. So is King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who enforces the Koran as that country’s constitution. Iran is called the Islamic Republic of Iran, etc.

Which is precisely why the flow of refugees is from enslaved Arabia to the Christian West, and not the other way around.

Levant has it exactly right. The politically correct posture of pretending that Canada is as much an Islamic country as it is a Christian country is just that: cheap posturing. It is an insult to the majority of people in this country as well as a slight to its heritage.

It is precisely the Judeo-Christian heritage of Canada that has made it a beacon of light and a destination for those fleeing poverty and oppression. Tolerance was invented by the Christian culture of the West, not by Islamic culture, which remains totalitarian in most Islamic countries to this day. Immigrants get that. Ezra Levant, a Jew, gets that. We need some political leaders who are not so utterly hostile to Christianity that they get it too.

My Canada Would Be Better Off Minus Quebec

Quebec is more radically left-wing than the rest of the country and is a drag on Canada from the point of view of social conservatives. Marriage is almost dead in Quebec with a majority of births now being illegitimate. The Church has been hounded out of public life by an aggressive and fanatical secularism. The pressure for allowing euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada is coming mainly from Quebec.

Demographically, Quebec has the lowest birth rate in North America so it has no long-term future anyway. We will be funding more and more senior citizens in Quebec even as its workforce and economic contribution declines. About half of them want to separate anyway, so I say cut them loose. Let's separate from Quebec.

That is my reaction to the following story in The Globe and Mail.

In a concerted broadside against Ottawa, Quebec legislators have unanimously challenged the Harper government’s stance on abortion and asserted women’s right to choose.

The Quebec National Assembly adopted an all-party motion on Wednesday urging the federal government to end its “ambiguity” on abortion, a sign that the dormant abortion issue is starting to awaken divisions.

“Abortion is an inalienable right and the consensus expressed in the National Assembly reflects the consensus on this issue in Quebec society,” Premier Jean Charest told The Globe and Mail. “Today’s motion sends a clear message to the federal government on the need to protect an essential right for all women.”

Mr. Charest said Quebec has fought and won its battles over abortion rights. “That battle is over and here there is no turning back,” he said.

The Quebec MNA who introduced the motion says a prime catalyst for acting was Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to include funding for abortion services in Third World countries as part of his G8 maternal health initiative.

Quebec is out of touch with the rest of Canada and is just a force for anti-family and anti-life movements. Let it go and it can be isolated or else join the US, where it will fit in even less well.