LILLEY: What does Mark Carney do with his majority government now?
· Toronto Sun
Mark Carney has his majority now.
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Even before the byelections, Carney’s Liberals held the majority of occupied seats in the House of Commons. In less than a year, the PM went from leading a minority government to a majority without having to ask voters to endorse him and his plan again.
Who needs elections when backroom deals will get you the result you want?
There have been calls since last November when Chris D’Entremont crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals for the practice to be banned. Those calls heated up again after Marylin Gladu crossed the floor after supporting a petition to make the practice illegal just weeks ago.
Could floor-crossing be banned?
Laws banning floor-crossing have passed at the provincial level. The law in New Brunswick was repealed before it was ever tested in court, but a Manitoba law banning floor crossing was challenged in 2017 and was upheld before being repealed.
Proposing such a law would be popular with voters, but it won’t happen.
It doesn’t matter what the electorate thinks of floor-crossing, just like turkeys don’t vote to be on the menu for Christmas dinner, politicians who benefit from floor crossing aren’t about to make it illegal.
So, what will Carney’s Liberal team do now?
Liberals seem confused about what they stand for
It’s not clear and they seem like a confused party. No wonder when you have MPs sitting in the same caucus who are from the far-left of the NDP, an whole group of eco-warriors like Steven Guilbeault, rich business guy conservatives like Michael Ma and Freedom Convoy defender Gladu all in the same caucus.
We found out over the weekend that the Liberal Party believes that children need to be 16 years of age or older to have social media accounts . According to the Liberal Party, having kids under 16 hold social media accounts can have detrimental effects on children.
This is the same party that believes that 12- and 13-year-olds are wise enough to make the decision, without parental input, to transition their gender and start taking puberty blockers.
Those are two policies held by that party that don’t seem to jibe.
An exit tax to keep successful people in Canada
The Liberals, who last year elected a leader in Mark Carney in large part because he had vast international experience outside of Canada that made him wealthy, applauded the idea of imposing an exit tax on Canadians who want to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Patrick Pichette, a business executive who made most of his fortune outside of the country working for firms like Google, received loud applause when he suggested taxing young Canadians who choose to leave the country for opportunities elsewhere.
While calling for Canada to poach the best and brightest talent from other countries around the world, Pichette estimated that about 30,000 educated professionals head south to the States after graduating through the TN visa program and he says we need to stop that or make them pay more for their education.
“Save yourself $5 o $10 billion shut the TN program and then keep them in or make them pay their half a million so that if they leave, I’m okay with that. You want to go to the U.S., give me back my money!” Pichette said to applause.
That idea could be considered a violation of section 6 of the Charter which states that “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.” Imposing an exit tax like what Pichette is talking about would infringe on that right for most people.
It’s also more than a little hypocritical coming from a man who made his fortune in the states and now lives in the U.K. It’s doubly hypocritical that he was saying it at the convention of a party led by Mark Carney who has done the same thing.
The Liberals only really care about one thing, holding onto power. With the floor-crossings of the last few months and the byelections now passed, power is the only thing they have secured.