The groups who enjoy criticizing the new Liberals for their supposed 'style over substance' approach (proven by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's youth, hair, and handsomeness) to political posturing might be foaming at the mouth with suppressed rage at the appointment of a defense minister who happens to have both substance and a generous dollop of swag. Harjit Sajjan is a military and police veteran and the media (both social and traditional) are already swooning over him.
It's an interesting case study: if the Harper government were to appoint a Sikh to a prominent cabinet location it would be seen, by some observers, as a rather baldfaced ploy to appeal to immigrants. But then, any rational person always saw some kind of Machiavellian undertone to anything done by the Harper Administration. It's the people widely considered paranoid (AKA not employed as a political analysts) who are seen as paranoiac when they attribute Machiavellianist tendencies to all parties. Either way, Minister Sajjan seems an excellent choice and the media is head over ass in love with the dude, and it makes Canada seem much more cool and culturally open than the United States of America, where the most prominent 'brown politicians' have 'white names' (Bobby Jindal et. al.) – but that's a cultural thing...
Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau is turning heads all over the place, as his looks and relative youth (which invited the criticism and mockery of the Conservative Party of Canada) draw the admiration of many, and the media did not hesitate to point out his effects on women. I don't know... all senior bureaucrats and political figures are more the inventions of their parties, in the contemporary system, than self-reliant actors. The wave of positivity is going to break at some point, and it will probably just lead to more of the same for Canada (either political apathy or another Conservative government, depending on the number and severity of scandals).
Also please note: the Niqab debate, a completely different issue from Sikhs in Government, managed to fail spectacularly and further sunk its inventors, but that is all ancient history according to the Gods of The News Cycles, who have decreed that ISIS, after being on the backburner until they attacked a European city, are Big News again. Islamophobia, which was also a backburner topic for a number of years, is now a household name to be invoked in hopeless arguments between idealistic youth and their racist parents. In Canada, Hindu temples were attacked, one mosque was firebombed, and a small segment of the population basically confirmed the idea of Racist Canada being alive and well in 2015.
The Paris Attacks of November 2015 are already the biggest news story of the month, whether deservedly or not, and are going to tinge all political discourse in the West and beyond for a year or more, and are having interesting effects. The United States is toying with the idea of isolationism as well as a final solution to its Muslim population (via special ID and blatant surveillance and oppression). Canada, meanwhile, announced via its global mouthpiece, Justin Trudeau, that it would allow refugees – a feel-good story in a week marred with tragedy and soapbox speeches about the world. Besides the 'rock star image' [via Lamesteam Media] , what else has this change in governance changed, in governance?
Firstly it must be said that an attitude of hope has descended on the Canadian populace to such an extent that marijuana dispensaries have been setting up, and marijuana businesses that have lain dormant as pipe dreams are on the verge of mobilizing as everyone is ready to make a profit from something that recently only profited the criminal class. However this hopefulness just translates, for this observer, into a self-serving frenzy as the old structure of marijuana distribution slowly (emphasis on slow) dissolves and reforms.
For the moment nothing is clear but that adults will be able to smoke not just the demon tobacco and drink toxic alcohol, with their choice of legally prescribed pharmaceutical drugs (which often fall into the wrong hands)... but finally be able to smoke, legally, the relatively harmless and benign drug that only 1 in 10 people are afraid of anymore. Times have changed, and it only took 10 years longer than anyone thought. However, one must ask oneself since it is 2015, how much power in this new weed economy will go from big crime to big business? Will it be a monopoly? Who gets the keys, and why?
But weed is just that, a smokescreen. It's a recipe for public contentment. Nebbishy suburbanites will cheekily light up a joint after 30 years of abstinence, after the kids have gone to bed, the newspapers that have catered to ageing line-toers will have full page spreads on how to roll joints, and all the smoking advances of our time will step out from the shadows of quasi-legal, well-lit stores, and into the mainstream. It's a cultural change that will make me cringe, and in an elitist way I will probably never smoke marijuana again
But this whole thing isn't about marijuana (even though, depending on who you ask, it is). Justin Trudeau has also made the impossible pledge to try and reduce methane and CO2 emissions to sustainable levels – something that, after years of Conservative denial and enabling, is likely going to be a challenge. Sure, the CAPP doesn't outright own the Prime Minister's Office anymore, but it will have its oily claws into some of it at some point. It is too prominent an industry to merely sit back and watch its potential slashed by hippie talk about a disintegrating climate situation that it has denied, and paid scientists to deny, for the past ten years.
The idea of Senate Reform is also an interesting one, but how will it be achieved? John Oliver, noted British-turned-American late night personality, commented on the absurdity of spending 23 million dollars to uncover roughly 1 million dollars' worth of misleading expense claims. More scandals will dawn, and the Senate will probably remain as it is. An oversight committee would be a better option but would of course make the Canada's nightmarish Kafkaesque bureaucracy even more bureaucrazy.
Meanwhile there are structural problems with Canada's economy, which is 'holding on' at the moment and probably still receding as of the time of this post. The Trans Pacific Partnership is going to change things, but critics are reminded of NAFTA and other agreements and the specifics, now available to the public, were kept secret for a long time. So much for transparency. The country does not have the clout to ignore the agreement, and will try to put a good spin on it, but in the end it may well be that it, as with NAFTA, it is not really as good for the goose as for the gander (I'm basically saying that the US profited most from it, which is true, and that Canada got shafted, which is always true because Canada is kind of a nebbishy non-player in the world economy).
Still, Canadian mining companies are busy ignoring human rights all over the world, big Canadian engineering firms (engineers are Canada's mythological heroes) have insane ethics problems (SNC Lavalin, the biggest, was quite involved with Gaddafi). So much for heroes. Unemployment is stubborn in the country and this is really something for another article, because lots of prominent Canadians have spoken out about the issue while saying nothing and implying the country is full of 'layabouts' and 'fag art students' who are all useless and have nobody to blame but themselves for their lack of dream jobs and property. This is part of a world shift in attitudes, because it's easier to blame art students than the financial markets and big banks, clearly because art students have the power.
It seems I have lost my way in this article, so I want to close it with the observation that Trudeau will likely prove himself a better Prime Minister than Harper ever did (due to certain realistic attitudes about people, the world, and marijuana) but long term it may well happen that none of the progressive moves will work out, or even be attempted, out of fear of Canada's relict reactionary populations, American lobbying, the lobbying of the private sector (which probably owns just about every part of Canada at this point), and the realities of a country that is economically stagnant. Or maybe not. Since the Canadian Census was disabled it is hard to get the kind of statistics that paint a reasonable picture of where the country is headed. So we will see, and in the meantime, we can chuckle as the world squeals about Trudeau and then forgets about Canada again (this is probably already accomplished).
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