One of the press releases that caught my attention this week was a statement by Westlock-St. Paul MP Arnold Viersen, who spoke at a “Support Canadian Pipelines” rally in Slave Lake on Jan. 6.
It was mostly what you expect: the carbon levy is hamstringing our industry, regulations and red tape are killing jobs, and so on and so forth.
But one part of the release jumped out at me that I want to address in a column, and it’s the part where Viersen is quoted as saying, “We are tired of Justin (Trudeau) pushing his globalist agenda and want him to govern for Canadians.”
The words “globalist agenda” in particular raised my hackles.
I’ve always been a little fuzzy on what the term “globalist” meant. The actual definition is “a person who advocates the interpretation or planning of economic and foreign policy in relation to events and developments throughout the world,” but it seems to have mutated into “leftist Illuminati that wants to erase all borders.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel? Globalist. French President Emmanuel Macron? Globalist. Jewish billionaire George Soros? Oh, you better believe he’s a globalist.
And now that label seems to be attached to Justin Trudeau.
In fact, during a town hall in Saskatchewan on Jan. 10, a woman confronted Trudeau and said, “You are not working for Canada. You are working for your globalist partners.”
She also ranted at length about how Quebec gets all its oil from the Middle East (which is false) and how Trudeau once said “sharia law” was compatible with Canadian values (also false).
Anyways, I was more than a little disturbed to see our local MP aping the same individuals who call for the lynching of our Prime Minister.
I don’t know if Viersen genuinely believes that Justin Trudeau is actually a “tool of the globalist agenda” or if he and other Conservatives are simply mimicking their language as political postering in an effort to gain support. After all the former Conservative government, just as the Liberals, made a considerable effort to increase Canada’s economic prosperity through foreign trade deals.
Regardless, it doesn’t belong in our political discourse.
If you want to see where a breakdown in decorum leads, take a look south of the border, where the U.S. government is in the midst of its longest-ever shutdown over a useless border wall, and evidence mounts daily that the President is a compromised Russian asset.
That sort of rhetoric might lead to some short-term wins for the Conservatives, but it isn’t good for Canada’s long-term future.
