Election debate was a real gong show

Justin Trudeau lost ground. He was on the attack trying to bring O’Toole and Singh down to his level instead of touting his accomplishments as there is no honour in broken commitments and promises. Trudeau was on the offensive and revealed just how offensive he really is.

O’Toole and Paul stood out for their quiet, rational defence of their plans and policies. Singh stood out for showing the most passion and for his calling Trudeau out on his many failures. Blanchet was a grumpy, mean-spirited, discriminating, thin-skinned isolationist, claiming to be insulted when questioned on Quebec’s language and religious symbol laws. He, and Quebec earned the ‘insults.’

Most of the debate was frivolous fluff. The health care debate resolved nothing. Leadership requires holding a health care conference of provinces to adopt a standard plan for rescuing a system in crisis. Federal funding should come with a requirement that provinces agree on a plan. Over the next five years, federal funding would be incrementally replaced by tax points giving provinces increased control over the health care field and phasing out federal interference. The federal government has minimal legitimate constitutional authority in the health care field.

Standards for personal care homes require the same approach. Success depends on provincial by-in.

Gun control is a Trudeau issue, not a public issue. Crime control is the public issue not addressed during debate.

Climate change is another Trudeau issue. Our climate has changed – past tense. No government can control climate.

The carbon reduction scheme is based on a false and unproven hypothesis. Please show us the science that proves a link between human carbon emissions and global warming. Please put it in the public domain for peer-group scientific review. I dare you.

Completely different factors are driving climate change, and we are doing nothing to prepare for survival. Droughts, floods, tornadoes, and wildfires are here even though global warming is minuscule. Putting our faith in plans to be fully effective by 2030 is worse than ridiculous. What happens if the carbon reduction plan does not work?

Democratic governments do not run our economy; entrepreneurs and investors do. Government interference has cost us $ billions in lost productivity. Only communist nations control the economy, and their record is horrible. The best that Canada can do is build a rock-solid, fair, level playing field for business and industry, stay away and allow taxes from unfettered free enterprise pay for our social services.

Higher taxes for the rich and business is counter-productive, resulting in fewer rich people and industries calling Canada home. Wealth has no patriotism or geographic boundaries. It flows to where the economy is stable, and taxes are low.

The solution is to eliminate income and sales taxes for the working class and people on fixed incomes along with others with incomes below the poverty line for the person or family. That provides instant relief without a massive amount of paperwork.

Far too much debate time was spent on affordable housing, which is outside of federal jurisdiction. This is another area that can only be managed at the provincial level. The provinces and cities control land sales and authorize development. They need to get together and develop a plan for housing price relief that will not endanger municipal service levels. The most severe problems are in large urban areas. One solution is to transition our largest cities – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver into provinces. That gives them the taxation and planning powers they lack at present.

Post-pandemic Canada will be very different from the past. We are entering a gig economy - a free market system where organizations and independent workers engage in short-term work arrangements. In 2017 the US gig economy had 55 million participants. It’s estimated that 36% of US workers participate in the gig economy, and 33% of companies extensively use gig workers. Those numbers have grown over the past four years, and Canada has a similar development.

If we fail to prepare for an altered workplace environment, we will face a slow economic recovery.

These are a few of the many full meals left out of the debates. What we got was scraps from the dessert tray that was unsatisfying and left us wondering who was most capable of finding a path through the multiple hard choices that will have to be made during the next four years.

All of us will not be satisfied; we never are. We need someone capable of making the best decisions for the most people, which is an order the elitist Trudeau team cannot deliver.