Your suffering is their joy

Someday, Maybe, a Canadian Reckoning

According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his chief accountant Chrystia Freeland, runaway inflation and the recession it announces are something of a godsend. Price increases, she said in a recent address, are “a reminder of why climate action is so important, and why we have to work…faster towards a green economy.” The benefits, according to this authority, are clear: More green energy, lower prices. The claim is so fatuous as to induce intellectual migraine.

Over the last few hours, I have been reviewing our last week’s expenditures and current financial status, and I find the red column expanding faster than Freeland’s race to Green:

• Our investments for the future have plunged by 15%.
• Filling up our Ford SUV cost $120.
• Two moderate shopping trips to our local Safeway set me back $290.
• An order of take-out, which only recently cost $12.95, was now $17.95. (The owner of the establishment worried that she might not be able to stay open much longer.)
• A small cache of pharmaceuticals and hygienic products totaled $170.

Add to the catalogue the almost magical levitation of taxes on everything in sight, including the compounding carbon tax that is putting our farmers out to scrannel, and we have before us the specter of economic collapse. There’s more, of course, and readers will have similar lists. No need to belabor; we are speaking the same language. I guess we should thank our lucky stars that there is still gas in the pumps and a dwindling supply of food on the shelves that will allow us to experience the joys of imminent bankruptcy. But all is not lost. The solution for the gas hikes, according to the premier of my home province of British Columbia, John Horgan, is beautifully simple: “Think before you hop in the car.”

Justin Trudeau comes from endowment money and Chrystia Freeland is flush with perks, a lavish six-figure salary, automatic raises, and a gold-clad retirement portfolio. Their limousines and jets drink greedily and cost-free from the public trough. But we should remember that they are laboring to save the planet. Hard-working public evangelists surely merit their emoluments. Moreover, their fiscal measures are a small price to pay, apparently, for so glorious an expeditionary adventure into the looming future, regardless of collateral damage.