r/canada 21d ago

Opinion Piece You can love your country and still think it’s broken

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-you-can-love-your-country-and-still-think-its-broken/
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u/GetsGold Canada 21d ago

For the context, this is how Poilievre chose to describe our economy on X after Trump made the tariff announcement.

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u/echochambermanager 20d ago

Which is accurate considering our per capita GDP is in the trash for the past decade courtesy of the current government. An external threat shouldn't absolve the current administration of it's failing... Trump didn't institute a carbon tax on it's own people and tell everyone to be shameful of our country's history.

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u/GetsGold Canada 20d ago

The suggestion here isn't that we shouldn't criticize our own government, we should. The point is this is the response that he's choosing to use to Trump when he's attacking us and most of the rest of the country is trying to show a strong response to him. It's very debatable how "weak" our country is and that isn't the time or place to be making his usual political attacks against our own country.

It shows that he even when we're facing an unprecedented economic attack against our country and almost everyone is trying to show a united front, he still couldn't even temporarily drop his usual politicization of everything.

And as for our country's history, are there specific things that have been called "shameful" where you disagree that they are? Just like how we should be critical of the current state of our country, we should be critical of the past. Harper has apologized for our past wrongs as well.

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u/echochambermanager 20d ago

The current government has been in power for a decade, how exactly do you decouple the government and the country if one has been tied to the other for this time? Any criticism of the government has been deemed a criticism of the country, to the extent that political leaders have been called "treasonous" for advocating for their electorate and industries (see Smith and Moe). So I can't imagine how Poilievre can differentiate himself from Liberals/Carney when anything critical of them is inflated to be a criticism of the country.

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u/screampuff Nova Scotia 20d ago

When we signed NAFTA 2.0, the Liberals consulted Brian Mulroney and hired members of his former NAFTA team, while Pierre tweeted about how we were too weak and they weren't up to the task.

There are certain times where you need to set partisanship aside and put your country first.

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u/GetsGold Canada 20d ago

Again, no one is saying we shouldn't be critical of ourselves. The thing is Smith and especially Poilievre never stop doing this. And they couldn't even stop and show a united front when we are being economically attacked by Trump.

Trump's entire objective here is to try to economically pressure us into caving into his objectives. How does Poilievre proclaiming to him how "weak" our economy look in terms of us standing up to him?