Meanwhile up north…

By Eriburt Loehner 

KIN welcomes our newest columnist, Eriburt Loehner, of Vancouver (of whom more later).

Here’s his first  column —

‘Oh Canada’, begins our national anthem. It brings to mind visions of boreal forests filled with wildlife: bear, elk, and moose; majestic mountains covered in snow; massive farms with oceans of swaying prairie wheat stretching to the horizon; and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, red serge clad “Mounties” that always get their man.

To Canadians these visions are all quite cliché and border on kitsch.  

While many of these visions do exist to some degree, we now live in the 21st century and Canada is far more complex than these visions project.  

The Canadian economy relies on exports. These exports are usually raw materials that other countries use to manufacture goods that we Canadians import.

Canada is recognised around the world for its major export commodities: wheat, oil, coal, potash and beef.

Yet all these commodities have been recently eclipsed by Canada’s latest export commodity, Justin Trudeau, our prime minister.

Justin Trudeau is dynamic, young and appears to be pretty smart.

He certainly has the appropriate pedigree for a Canadian politician. His father was Pierre Elliot Trudeau, one of Canada’s iconic prime ministers during the late 1960’s to mid 1980’s.

His maternal grandfather was Scottish-born James Sinclair, the Minister of Fisheries under the Louis St. Laurent government in the mid 1950’s.

Justin Trudeau won the 2015 Canadian general election with the largest increase in the number of parliamentary seats for a political party in Canada’s history.

At the beginning of the election campaign it was not all that obvious that his party would win the election, let alone win an overwhelming majority. His party was in third place.

The previous Prime Minister, Stephan Harper, said “Prime Minister was not an entry level job”. He did have a point.

Before becoming involved in politics, Justin Trudeau was a high school teacher. He was never involved in running a business or in a position of authority. He only became involved in politics in 2008 and leader of the Liberal Party in 2013.

One year after his election he is still extremely popular among Canadians.

Domestically he says all the right things and as a statesman he plays well on the international stage; however, ominous clouds are forming on the horizon.

Divisive decisions on pipelines and the purchase of jet fighters are coming. We will certainly find out how impervious he is to a determined opposition.