Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland furnishes an interesting case study in an apparently contradictory dynamic of incompetence and competence. As a high-ranking minister, she is clearly incompetent, having, for example, nearly deep-sixed our NAFTA treaty talks with Donald Trump. Her insistence on the inclusion of “progressive” policies, such as gender equality, labor union safeguards, a chapter dedicated to indigenous peoples, and favored environmental standards only ensured that Canada got the short end of the renewed accord. Her attempt to enact Liberal policy was politically inept.
She also exhibits a sentimental tendency to tear up at critical moments. She is famous for walking out of the EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada, fighting back tears—though as former NDP Premier Bob Rae tweeted in Freeland’s patronizing defense, “Crying is not a sign of weakness, it is a natural emotional response to a lot of different situations.” Her valediction to her conference confrères was risible beyond belief. “Canada is disappointed, I am personally very disappointed, I have worked very, very hard. We have decided to go back home. I am very, very sad, really. Tomorrow morning, I will be at home with my three children.” So there!
Being on the verge of tears for not getting her way with a team of alpha males is not how the representative of a G7 nation in the midst of a tough bargaining session is expected to behave. Rather, we are witnessing the hoary cliché of the spoiled little girl whose wishes Daddy has denied, but who will eventually pout her way through any setback. This is Canada’s finance minister.
As a member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum’s board of directors, however, she is not only competent but formidable. Some sites, like Military Wiki, Gateway Pundit, and others, have speculated that a compromised ancestry is at work. According to these sources, Freeland’s maternal grandfather Mykhailo Khomiak was the Nazi regime’s senior editor of the Ukrainian antisemitic daily newspaper Krakivs’ki visti (News of Krakow). But the past need not be prelude to the present. An individual is certainly not responsible for the sins of the father—or the grandfather—and I don’t want to indulge in baseless assumptions. Freeland is her own person and deserves to be evaluated on her own merits, as we all do.
What is far more significant as a basis for judgment is current behavior. Her response to the famous trucker convoy in Ottawa, legally and peacefully protesting the government’s punitive COVID-19 mandates, was nothing if not totalitarian in nature. Freeland stated that banks would be able to freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order. The same would apply to vehicle insurance of anyone involved with the demonstrations. Freeland went on to say that Canada’s Terrorist Financing Rules were being broadened to cover cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms and that she plans to make her emergency powers permanent. (more...)
No comments:
Post a Comment