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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 5/22/19

Elections Canada 2019: Justin's battered beanstalk

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Maid Chrystia, why are they yelling 'eat crow!'?
Maid Chrystia, why are they yelling 'eat crow!'?
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We left off our saga of Justin and the Beanstalk with the young wunderkind's triumph over the giant ogre (Prime Minister Harper), as he swept away the broken democratic shards littering his kingdom in the sky, to the cries of joy from the Canadian peasants. Justin began energetically fulfilling at least some of his many promises. He rejoined the Paris Agreement on Climate. Scientists breathed a sigh of relief as their withered vines received nourishment after 10 years of drought, and the muzzle on their right to speak about the perils of global warming was removed.

Justin's first budget had goodies for just about everyone, including a (small) increase on taxes on the rich. His finance minister Morneau proposed a $2-billion Low Carbon Economy Fund to help the provinces meet Canada's climate change targets to reduce the heat-trapping greenhouse gases so beloved by the ogre's friends in Alberta, with plans for a carbon tax to allow 'green growth' (surely an oxymoron, but at least green is no longer a bad word).

To help alleviate the plight of Canada's natives, Justin promised $8.4 billion in education, infrastructure, training, and a national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. He appointed fair damsels (regardless of experience) to 50% of his cabinet seats, declaring himself a "proud feminist" living in an era of equality. This included LGBTQIA,* as he made attendance at their summer parades a new ritual, giving them pride of place in his Valhalla.

Justin moved quickly to legalize a much prized weed, blessed with magical THC, beloved of youth, now accepted by less cool elders. This will no doubt be his one undisputed legacy of spreading joy to one and all.

But his early promise as a new leader with new ideas quickly lost its sheen. After 5 years, the weed is still not available. It turned out Justin legalized it more for the ogre's allies, the corporations. Peasants are limited to 4 plants, not enough for normal use, farmers included. Soon corporate growers with such flashy names as Tweed, Maricann Inc., Peace Naturals Project Inc. and WeedMD Rx Inc. took the lead, building massive, high security factories, as provinces squabbled with Justin about how to regulate and tax this new wonder drug.

So much for the peasants, who could have grown the plant as plants should be grown, in sunlight, under open skies, using no 'green growth', just Mother Nature. Maybe making a small income from their hard work.

Legalizing rape and pillage

Alberta tarsands
Alberta tarsands
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For the real Canadians, Canada's natives, there was little to cheer, with only window dressing on the plight of women, and no improvement in entrenched racism or the ongoing despoliation of their lands. Justin's worst decision was to continue the ogre's slavish devotion to the tarsands in Alberta, which rape and pillage Mother Nature. (Hey - I thought he was supposed to protect us!)

Justin even paid the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline shareholders, the ogre's allies, $4.b, much to their joy. They could see that it was not a good idea, even for nongreen growth. So the peasants quickly joined forces with the natives from the Atlantic to the Pacific to save not only native women from rape and pillage, but all Canadians, and their Mother Earth.

Even elite judges joined the peasants and natives, as the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the government's approval of the expansion project, citing that it did not sufficiently fulfill its constitutional duties to consult local First Nations groups, and because increased tanker traffic would imperil the endangered orca whales in the Pacific Ocean.

Justin betrayed even his youthful friends, interested in ending the ogre's 'best friend' relationship with the ogre in Palestine, where the peasants suffer far more than their cousins in Canada. One of his first royal edicts was to rubber stamp the ogre's motion targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, the brainchild of Canada's idealist youth, labelling these erstwhile allies anti-semites.

He also signed on to the ogre's $15b arms sale to the world's worst ogre, the Saudi prince bin Salman, who gleefully murdered and dismembered a pesky journalist, shocking the world's peasants, but forgiven by our human rights champion, eager to produce machines of death -- anything -- to keep the petrodollars rolling in.

This penchant to help the ogre's corporate friends led to a scandal which peaked in 2019, the Lavalin Affair, a cesspit of bribery and fraud. Justin dismissed his minister of justice, a native woman, Jody Wilson-Raybould, for trying to be honest. Whew!

Meanwhile, little ogres have sprung up in Alberta and Ontario, which, along with one in Saskatchewan, were determined to scuttle Justin's carbon tax, his green centrepiece, while gutting any hated environmental support they can find in their provincial fiefdoms.

Fighting foreign foes

Justin's record abroad is just as disappointing as his domestic bungling. His powerful Maid Chrystia has been barnstorming around the world, wrestling with ogre Trump over NAFTA free trade, winning 'concessions' (not) which gutted Canadian milk farmers.

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Eric writes for Al-Ahram Weekly and PressTV. He specializes in Russian and Eurasian affairs. His "Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games", "From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization" and "Canada (more...)
 

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