{"id":324998,"date":"2021-08-15T18:34:55","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T15:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/all-of-justin-trudeaus-unfinished-business\/"},"modified":"2021-08-15T18:34:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-15T15:34:55","slug":"all-of-justin-trudeaus-unfinished-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/all-of-justin-trudeaus-unfinished-business\/","title":{"rendered":"#All of Justin Trudeau’s unfinished business"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#All of Justin Trudeau’s unfinished business<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere\u2019s always more to do,\u201d says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.<\/span><\/p>\n

Put limits on how banks can gouge homeowners hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic? No. But,\u00a0 \u201c<\/span>there\u2019s always more to do<\/span><\/a>,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we\u2019re going to make sure our financial partners are part of the solution to making sure Canadians get through this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Royal Canadian Legion asks for $30 million to save ailing legions? They got less than half. \u201c<\/span>There\u2019s always more to do<\/span><\/a>,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally bring clean drinking water to all First Nations communities? We\u2019ve blown past Trudeau\u2019s self-imposed deadline, and 33 communities continue to live without safe and drinkable water. \u201c<\/span>We fully recognize there\u2019s a lot more to do<\/span><\/a>,\u201d Trudeau told the Sprawl.<\/span><\/p>\n

End a culture of harassment in the Canadian Forces? The top brass have, themselves, been implicated in wrongdoing, and Trudeau\u2019s own minister knew about it.\u201d<\/span>There\u2019s always more to do<\/span><\/a>,\u201d he insists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Calls mount to denounce Islamophobia in all its forms after attack on a Muslim family in London leaves four dead? Trudeau won\u2019t even fight Quebec\u2019s odious Bill 21. \u201c<\/span>There is always more to do<\/span><\/a>,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Calls for more support to help Indigenous communities unearth unmarked graves on residential school sites? \u201c<\/span>There is obviously more to do and I think there will be more that we will do<\/span><\/a>.\u201d Facing pressure to stop arresting for drug possession, amidst Canada\u2019s drug poisoning epidemic: \u201c<\/span>We know there\u2019s more to do.<\/span><\/a>\u201d Climate change, international trade, support for families: \u201c<\/span>Yes, there is more to do. There is always, always going to be more to do<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For his six years in power, Trudeau has proven remarkably adept at portraying a government in motion, even while at rest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But two mandates on, as he seeks a third, it\u2019s worth asking why there is so much work left to do\u2014and what work has really gotten done at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether it is the policy priorities he himself has identified, or a growing pile of crises facing the country, this government\u2019s progress has often been piecemeal, slow or altogether abandoned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, clearly, the work was just too much for his government. His fervent insistence that 2015 would be the last election conducted under the first-past-the-post electoral system has now become a running joke, as we head into the second election since under the system that seems to do his party very well\u2014because picking a system was simply too much work, and a decision that couldn\u2019t be left to Canadians themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Same, too, with his commitment to run only modest deficits before balancing the budget in 2019\u2014instead, that election year, he ran his largest deficit yet. The temptation to spend evidently outpaced a desire to keep his commitment. Now the pandemic has supercharged those deficits.<\/span><\/p>\n

A plan for a new era of government transparency hasn\u2019t come to pass either, as plans to expand the Access to Information system to ministers\u2019 offices have long since been disapp<\/a>eared. His government has found itself realizing that secrecy is just easier than the lofty goals of accountability it once put forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t fixed Canada\u2019s sex work laws, like he promised; nor has he followed court orders to end the practise of solitary confinement in federal prisons like he swore he would. Canada still hasn\u2019t, six years later, settled on a next-generation fighter jet. A supposedly transformational re-investment in housing <\/span>hasn\u2019t significantly increased funding for affordable housing<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Independent promise-tracker <\/span>Polimeter<\/span><\/a> found that, at the end of his first majority government, Trudeau had followed through on just around two-thirds of his campaignment commitments. About a quarter were partially followed-through on, and around 7 per cent were outright broken. Middling, but not a total failure.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his two-year minority mandate\u2014admittedly knocked sideways by the pandemic\u2014things have crunched to a halt. Just one-in-10 of his 2019 campaign promises were marked \u2018kept\u2019 by the accountability watchdogs. Around 40 per cent were \u2018in progress.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

A number of promises have just disappeared: A planned legislative framework for Indigenous policing has been incessantly talked about, but hasn\u2019t been introduced. His party fundraised endlessly on a vow to axe to the gay blood ban, but the discriminatory and homophoic policy remains on the books. A planned overhaul of how the justice department handles wrongful convictions has not come to fruition either. A pledged \u2018<\/span>Canada Entrepreneur Account<\/span><\/a>\u2019 hasn\u2019t been heard of since 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as though the COVID-19 pandemic halted all parliamentary business, either. The government has managed to declare a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, list a raft of new radical groups as terrorist organizations, introduce legislation to wildly expand the mandate of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to regulate online content, and pass massive budget bills that did everything from create the Canadian Economic Recovery Benefit to expanding the digital services covered by the GST.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been curious, amid this flurry of activity, what the Trudeau government prioritized and what it did not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Justice Minister David Lametti tabled legislation to repeal a raft of mandatory minimums, and to criminalize the practise of conversion therapy for LGBTQ Canadians. Except both bills died when Trudeau announced his election call\u2014meaning Canadians will continue to face years in prison for non-violent drug crimes, and queer people could continue facing phsycological torture without consequence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Yuen Pau Woo told the <\/span>Hill Times<\/span><\/i> recently that the Senator was ready to sit over the summer to pass the ban on conversion therapy. But the Liberal government only wanted the bill to make it to committee stage in the upper chamber, and did not want it prioritized in order to become law. \u201cThat\u2019s what the government wanted to see happen,\u201d Woo said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even when it comes to managing the pandemic itself, which Trudeau is sure to invoke with some regularity, there is some gap between the prime minister\u2019s self-evaluation and his results. While he deserves high marks for his <\/span>vaccine procurement strategy<\/span>, his government\u2019s efforts to acquire the technology<\/a> to build a Canadian vaccine passport has been glacial. While plans were first drawn up to install technology to validate Canadians\u2019 vaccines <\/span>late last year,<\/span> an actual vaccine passport won\u2019t be ready until <\/span>December at the earliest<\/span><\/a>\u2014that fact didn\u2019t stop the Liberal government from coming out to <\/span>pat themselves on the back<\/span><\/a> for their diligent work last week.<\/span><\/p>\n

The appearance of action, even in the absence of it, is part of the secret to Trudeau\u2019s success. So when the Liberal leader is asked on the campaign trail about his six years in power, listen for that promise that \u201cthere\u2019s always more to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Look past that rhetorical judo\u2014because, <\/span>of course<\/span><\/i> there\u2019s always more to do\u2014and start asking whether Justin Trudeau is really the best suited to get that work done.<\/span>
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