2 weeks Ago By Special to National Post
Article content The Liberal campaign in 2025 looks a lot like a bullfight — and the Canadian people are the raging bull. The party really wants you to focus on its new matador, dressed in his shiny central banker suit, waving around his little red scarf. Except the scarf isn’t red, it’s orange.
And it’s emblazoned with Donald Trump’s hate-inducing face. The Liberal campaign goal seems to be to wave their “Bad Orange Man” scarf so vigorously that, with any luck, the Canadian people will be fooled for just long enough to hand the Liberals a victory. Because, of course, the orange man truly is a disaster for this country.
And the Canadian public is right to be worried, fearful, and to want someone who can deal with the threat. The problem is that the Liberal matador isn’t new at all. He’s been brought in by Liberal HQ to give a new look to the same old team — a government that has already been in power for a decade.
Mark Carney’s cabinet is stuffed with the same people who sat in the cabinet of Justin Trudeau. These are the people who brought you government mismanagement of the economy, an incredible cost of living crisis, absolutely no answers to blistering housing prices, low productivity and a stagnant economy that’s only been propped up by unsustainable levels of record-high immigration. Did we mention the immigration screw-up? Yes, the Liberal party somehow turned around one of Canada’s greatest international achievements: its record of sustaining an open and accepting immigration policy.
And how did they do it? By turning their backs on a much-admired points system that brought newcomers here based on Canada’s economic needs, rewarding those who would be most likely to succeed, along with a compassionate refugee policy that responded to international crises. Instead of continuing with what worked, the Liberals opted to crush working people by dampening wage growth, instead rewarding employers who wanted cheap, immigrant, low-skilled labour to fill jobs. Then they opted to lose track of the massive rise in international students, allowing the program to be twisted into one that sells Canadian citizenship to foreigners for the price of high tuition.
But don’t think about this. Look at the orange man. Orange man bad.
All parties run campaigns that hope to direct your attention to their chosen issues. They all want to hide their warts. Every election campaign is an Instagram influencer masked by beauty filters.
The Conservatives seem to want us to forget that Pierre Poilievre used to wear glasses and be the attack-dog geek of our dreams (or maybe, for some, nightmares). Now he’s the smiling, macho-man dad wrapped in a Canadian flag. For the New Democrats, they’re just happy to get a glance.
A Jagmeet Singh campaign sign might as well read “Look at me. I’m still here.” But there’s something entirely next-level about the 2025 Liberal campaign.
It’s based on a kind of wishful amnesia. It wants people to forget that we have had a Liberal government for a decade, and that it’s responsible for the policies it now wishes to cancel. Carbon tax? Terrible idea.
Whoever came up with it? Housing crisis? How did it get this bad? We’ll fix it. Taxes? Too high. Let’s lower them.
If these sound like Conservative promises, that’s because they are. Maybe we should switch the metaphor. It’s not so much a matador at a bullfight as it is your lousy ex-boyfriend catfishing you on a dating app.
You’ve finally decided to break free of the terrible guy who had ruined your life for over a decade. You get on the apps, hopeful about the next great thing. And there he is — an apparent rich banker who seems handsome and friendly.
A little boring perhaps. But after the last guy, maybe boring is what you need. He’s saying the exact opposite of what your no-good ex-boyfriend used to say.
What could go wrong? Just one date. Canadians are going to show up to the date only to find out they’ve been catfished. Not only is the guy not who he says he is, he’s literally your ex-boyfriend, using a “central bank filter” to camouflage his photos.
If the Canadian public opts to go with the Liberals on April 28, they are going to end up back with their lousy ex. And unfortunately, that relationship could last another four or five years. That’s not a bad date — it’s political jail time.
National Post.
