"Losing his marbles" strikes me as an apt description of what we are seeing more frequently in his behaviour - lashing out at anybody who disagrees with him.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-trudeau-and-the-gang-of-six-a-pm-undone-by-his-own-handiwork
Colby Cosh: Trudeau and the Gang of Six: A PM undone by his own handiwork
Colby Cosh June 13, 2019 10:05 AM EDT
There’s almost no other way to put it: the prime minister seems to be losing his marbles. On Monday, the premiers of five provinces and the Northwest Territories sent him a polite, conventional open letter raising familiar concerns with the Liberal government’s resource bills C-69 (which creates a new regime for federal review of big infrastructure projects) and C-48 (the ban on oil tanker traffic along most of B.C.’s coast).
The premiers, who included the three Prairie conservatives, Ontario’s Doug Ford, and New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs, didn’t say anything you haven’t heard before. They claimed that C-69 is a “reform” that makes things worse for megaproject investors, who are already shying away from Canada, and that as passed by the House of Commons it tramples provincial responsibility for resource development. The tanker ban, they added, is just the putrid icing on the toxic C-69 cake.
There is some firm language in the premiers’ letter. They warn that “The federal government must recognize the exclusive role provinces and territories have over the management of our non-renewable natural resource development or risk creating a Constitutional crisis.” C-48 in particular, they say, “will have detrimental effects on national unity.”
This does not seem like an especially outrageous warning to deliver. Canada is, the last time anyone checked, a federation. Because Ford’s name is on the letter, the signatories represent more than half the country’s population, and in particular the interest of that half in resource revenue and jobs. The tanker ban, almost by definition, sacrifices the general welfare of a resource-reliant national economy and federal treasury for the perceived protection of one thinly populated region. That may be a worthwhile tradeoff on utilitarian grounds, but from a national unity standpoint it is inescapably what it is: a choice between what two different groups of Canadians want.
But for some reason, as my colleagues Don Braid and Matt Gurney have described, the PM went kinda bananas, calling the signers of the letter “absolutely irresponsible” and accusing them of “threatening national unity” by pointing out the disunifying nature of the Liberal bills. Trudeau added that “Anyone who wants to be prime minister, like Andrew Scheer, needs to condemn those attacks on national unity.”
Trudeau seems to have decided that “attacks on national unity,” which consisted entirely of speaking in its defence, were a promising wedge issue. The “Will X at long last rise to his feet and denounce Y?” rhetorical trope is usually reserved for situations in which Y is some hate group or nefarious cult, and maybe that is how Trudeau regards the gang of six letter-signers.
Yet their offensive epistle actually endorses the Senate’s amended version of C-69 and begs for it to be adopted. You’ll recall that after hearing its own evidence on the impact of the bill, the Senate split up into its Conservative and “Independent” camps, returned with separate lists of legislative improvements, and found that they matched almost perfectly. They were, with relative ease, able to reach agreement on a sober second version of the bill to send back to the House.
Is the Senate also to be considered an attacker of national unity? Even in its primordial 1867 state, that chamber is intended to be a place where provincial and regional interests receive special care. (Again: Canada - it’s a federation!) Then, at a later point in Canadian history, the institution found its most radical reviser, a certain Rt. Hon. J.P.J. Trudeau. This obscure Canadian historical figure tried to increase the diminishing prestige of the Senate by making new appointments independent of the PMO and by disconnecting the Liberal Senate caucus from its brethren in the House.
The hard work done by the Senate on C-69 and its relatively aggressive advocacy for revision of C-69 is entirely a product of these changes. The detached Independent senators took Trudeau at his word, behaved independently and, lo and behold, found that they agreed with the Conservatives on a buncha stuff. Now Conservative premiers are praising the Senate’s craftsmanship. And Trudeau has no more intelligent or strategic reaction than a sloppy, goofy rant about unity?
Frankly, from an admittedly less-than-ideal Alberta perspective, passing the revised C-69 and C-48 together looks like it might be a good recipe for Trudeau. The letter, while grumbling about the tanker ban, practically invites this approach. When it comes time to campaign in a few months, the PM could take credit for the work of his Senate, pat himself on the back for responding to the concerns of the premiers, and boast to eco-sensitive voters that he was able to go ahead with core protection for the allegedly vulnerable B.C. coast.
Instead he is indulging in warlike off-the-cuff talk that can only attract continued sarcastic remarks about his sunny ways. Hey, I was never a big fan of the idea of a “sunny” Liberal prime minister either, but I cannot say I enjoy the spectacle of a paranoid and unhinged one.
