Liberals are leaving an ungodly mess for Poilievre’s Conservatives to clean up
New report details just how easily China can mess with Canadian elections
That it was delivered by a rookie makes it that much more notable. Calgary Heritage Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar arrived in Parliament only last summer after a cakewalk byelection win following the resignation of Conservative Bob Benzen.
In his remarks to the House, Majumdar was generous in his support for the comprehensive security partnership the Liberal government concluded with Ukraine last month. But Majumdar was also frank about what everybody knows, which is that it will fall to the Conservatives to follow through with the arrangement.
Barring some unimaginably cataclysmic event, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government will be history by October next year. It will be up to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives to pick up the pieces of a shattered economy and the unfathomably bleak prospects facing almost every Canadian under the age of 30.
An unknowable American presidential election result that could change everything about the way the world works this fall doesn’t exactly help in the challenge of charting a course forward. A sophisticated grasp of the big-picture state of affairs in the current moment, though, will help.
Majumdar’s equipped with a grasp like that, at least. “I think it is important, as we get into this debate, to take a step back and consider the environment we are in right now,” Majumdar began. Canadians have to face up to the hard fact that we have enemies out there. The days of sunny-ways diplomacy are over, and Canadians will have to find friends to sort out a way of defending our way of life.
“The democratic world needs to arrive at a shared understanding of the rivals we must now confront,” Majumdar said. Foremost: Russia, “most fiercely met by Ukrainian soldiers on the borders that they are fighting so hard to defend.” In the Middle East, “terrorist extremists that deserve to be defeated,” and China and its satrapies that threaten the order of the Indo-Pacific region.
In other words, a partnership to counter the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis — rivals that require deterrence and need to be made fully aware that there are still powers that can mobilize against their ambition to reorganize the world. In Majumdar’s future, “Canada would be a fierce and vital part of that partnership.”
