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LeBlanc cheque
A new finance minister reminds us that much of
Canada’s decline began with appeasement of Quebec
Greg Klein | December 20, 2024
Born into the Trudeau family’s inner circle, Dominic LeBlanc now
serves as finance figurehead. Only four Francophones have held the job
yet Canada’s Franco favouritism has long prevailed.
Federal budgets have soared so far past fiscal reality that it doesn’t matter who supposedly flies them. Chrystia Freeland’s tax-and-spend enthusiasm knew no bounds and the vastly over-rated minister “quit” only after learning of her impending demotion. Predecessor Bill Morneau’s resignation might have been motivated more by Trudeau’s insulting behaviour than pressure to pile ever more billions onto the national debt. Meanwhile Canadians have built up such extravagant expectations as to foil any new government’s attempt to cut spending.
So it’s business as usual still now that the finance post has gone to long-time Trudeau family friend Dominic LeBlanc, Justine’s former babysitter. Canada’s spending mania was generations in the making and represents just one more aspect of societal decline. But its genesis owes much to appeasement of Quebec and Francophone fecklessness.
As Michael Bliss pointed out, successive federal governments long had an unwritten policy of never trusting the finance portfolio to French Canadians. (Of course that usually means Quebecois but LeBlanc is Acadian. Bliss was also referring to a time when cabinet ministers at least influenced policy.)
Pork barrel appointments were a different matter, and were often reserved for Francophones. Some Lester Pearson-era examples given by Link Byfield (Identity Crisis and the Rise of Quebec, 2009) include postmaster general, immigration, defence and public works. “The Diefenbaker Tories had tried to clean up patronage,” Byfield wrote, “and their reward was to lose almost all their Quebec seats in 1962.”
In post-Dief deference to Quebec, Pearson expanded the province’s cabinet presence and sometimes corrupt influence. Then Quebec’s intrusion burst onto Canada with the rapid ascent of Trudeau I. In 1977 he appointed Jean Chretien as finance minister.
He was the first Francophone in the job and an especially cynical choice. Aptly labelled by Mark Steyn as a “ward healer,” Chretien proved to be a sub-mediocre, conniving little grifter foisted on this G7 country by a banana republic sans bananes. Ironically, Pseud Sr. humiliated the hustler in 1978 with an uncharacteristic $2-billion budget cut on which the PM and his inner circle decided and publicized without Chretien’s knowledge. He was a Quebecois DEI appointment even by Quebecois DEI standards.
That unsuccessful pre-1979 election tactic aside, Francophone-friendly Liberals loved spending and much the same mentality overtook Conservatives under Brian Mulroney, whose love of corruption, patronage, spending and new taxes showed his family’s long-time Quebec acculturation.
Two charts show federal debt from 1965 to 2023 and from 2013 to March 1, 2024.
Beginning in the late ’60s debt climbs slowly at first, then suddenly. After a dip in the
latter Stephen Harper years, debt regains altitude, rising dramatically in 2020.
(Source: CEICDATA.com)
But with Justin Trudeau and his grand viziers, corruption can be equally brazen while deficits and debt have swollen more than ever. Pseud Jr. never did explain his fatuous claim that “the budget will balance itself” and, as a pretty boy from Quebec, will never have to. At any rate the finance ministry and to some extent Blackface himself, like the rest of this DEI government, most likely take direction from an unelected backroom committee. Justine’s former babysitter will now be babysat, although not necessarily by Justine. Likely some kind of PMO clique runs the show while the attention-craving front man preens for the cameras.
One aspect of fiscal recklessness, though, features politicians bribing voters with their own money. But the Quebecois pillage non-Quebecois taxpayers. La province spéciale constitutes a net drain on Canadians through transfer payments, job set-asides, Quebecois-benefiting expansion of government and Crown corporations, corrupt procurement practices and the innumerable subsidies and slush funds pouring into the Quebec trough.
Of course that spoils system costs more than taxes can provide, so money-creation threatens the economy with instability, possibly collapse. The problem of fiat currency, however, remains outside Canadian public discourse. On any issue regarding Quebec, the rest of Canada can say little and do nothing. And now, with a multi-faceted social revolution attacking all aspects of normality, Quebec’s self-serving prominence fades into the background.
Yet ethnic favouritism, political correctness and the disenfranchisement of Anglos began with appeasement of Quebec. Because the parasitic society will never separate unequivocally, it’s just one more unfixable problem of a doomed country.