Like Father Like Son?

The Liberal Party of Canada has raised a lot of money to fight the 2015 election and their star, Justin Trudeau, is glad-handing and smiling from Gander to Tofino.  Compared to his opponent, stodgy old policy-wonk Stephen Harper, Justin looks like a winner with the young crowd just like his dad was in 1968 when the fuddle-duddle Conservative Party got the boot.  Yes, sex appeal, charisma, whatever you call "it",  look great on t.v.  but they don't raise the Gross Domestic Product, create jobs, increase trade or reduce poverty.

Pierre Trudeau, like President Obama, always expressed deep concerns about the free-enterprise market economy.  Mr. Obama said "it doesn't work, it never worked".  Mr. Trudeau said "we haven't been able to make it work, the free market system".  The result in both Canada and America was a huge rise in government debt and size of the federal work-force.  Pierre Trudeau's spending and deficit spree led to high interest rates (20%) ,  unprecedented abuse of the Unemployment Insurance program, barriers to foreign investment in Canada and the hated National Energy Program.  Mr. Trudeau could not have created a better way to divide the country that the N.E.P. . President Obama has driven the National Debt up to 17  trillion dollars, boosted welfare spending and unleashed "quantitative easing" - flushing the system with billions of newly-printed dollars to lower interest rates and grease economic growth.  The problem is that this "easy money"  has only driven the stock market up, not employment or the economy.

So here comes Mr. Trudeau junior.  Young, great smile, good boxer, cool;  all the characteristics that voters like.  Hopefully, in 2015, the electorate will look behind the Colgate smile and find substantive economic policies that will move Canada forward.  Remember his dad.  In l968, young voters propelled Pierre Trudeau into the Prime Minister's chair.  But once we gained real-world experience, a light bulb moment brought all of us back to reality and he was out.