Stop Virtue-Signaling Voters, Freeland Says: QUOTABLE

03/04/2025

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“Politicians lose when we think we are smarter than the people we work for and … we think our job is to lecture people. That’s not how democracy works.”

Chrystia Freeland, Liberal leadership candidate

Isn’t it interesting how Canadian politicians believe that the road to power goes through U.S. talk shows. Justin Trudeau uses Stephen Colbert to promote himself, Mark Carney to Jon Stewart and now Freeland to Bill Maher from which this quote emanates.

Maybe it speaks louder to the quality of domestic late-night television than political aspirations but the pols do know where the eyeballs are and how YouTube snippets play in Canada from U.S. television. “One of ours must be pretty good to be talking with Stephen Colbert. They’ve made it.” When will we discover that Canada means more than talking to some blow-dried blowhard on U.S. TV. Maybe we’ll find out that very soon.

Back to Freeland’s quote.

Ottawa is the smartest major city in Canada. Blame it on the federal government and the spinoff industries that emanate from that. Washington is the same south of the border. Capital cities are like that.

And yet at Ottawa City Hall, we have a group of pols and staffers that have created a governing body so bad that it can’t even find hires for well-paying responsible jobs. Laurier Avenue is career poison.

Still we have the city hall spectacle of virtue-signaling so resounding that it has reached the ears of the Los Angeles entertainment types. Lectures on saving the climate while city hall and its lame pols destroy the civic transportation system and fail to produce sustainable waste management.

Lectures on how intensification will save the world when it is just a fob to the development industry that holds Laurier Avenue as tight as a clamped vice. Yes low-rise apartments in Highland Park will solve the global environmental crisis. And as an insignificant aside, they also make a buck or two for builders.

Nothing like constituents with PhDs piled upon PhDs being told by a former paint salesman that they’re not living their lives correctly. But the pol must be right because he gets his picture in the paper. Memo to council: media coverage don’t make ya no smarta. This might be one of the few Ottawa councils that will leave the city worse during its term than better. And yet, we insignificant citizens are not living right, according to the collection of Socrates at city hall.

So Freeland is right. People don’t like being told how to live by nincompoops who can’t do their jobs at a competent level. By ideologues who can’t fix a pothole and make a bus run on time but can try to put an end to X-Nazis Elon Musk. Administration by public relations. Votes over substance.

Here’s an idea. Stop lecturing the public on big non-city issues when you have neither the competence nor energy nor jurisdiction to see global issues through. For a change, do your mandated job right.

That way we peasants might be able to avoid another multi-billion-dollar mistake. Remember who’s paying the bill for your council errors so a touch of humility might be in order.

Maybe city hall will actually listen.

Ken Gray

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Tags: Chrystia Freeland Liberal Quotable virtue signaling

Ron Benn says:
03/04/2025 at 10:14 AM
Politicians should keep in mind one of the telling moments in the US presidential campaign of 1992. Clinton’s line about “it’s the economy” resonated to the point where he went on to defeat sitting President George H. Bush.
A robust economy is required to generate sufficient tax revenues (income, sales, …) to fund programs and promises. Policies that restrict economic stability (note that I did not say growth) limit the resources required to fund those policies. Which starts a downward spiral from which it is difficult to recover.
Where do virtue signals fit into the above equation? No where. Yet the one skill that far too many elected officials and senior administrators at all levels of government have worked endlessly on is lecturing the people on how they must change their values to meet those of the elected officials. If that is all you have to offer, I suggest that you seek other employment.
The Voter says:
03/04/2025 at 10:22 AM
Unfortunately, I think they’re only too familiar with who carries the can for their massive screw-ups. That’s one of the things that allows them to be so irresponsible. No matter how royally they mess up, they are never the ones to pay the price financially or any other way. That privilege is reserved for the likes of you and me … and, of course, our grandchildren’s grandchildren.