A recent report out of the US raises questions about politicians’ (in Canada and the US) obsession with the state of the middle class and highlights why Donald Trump won the US election. It is a sobering picture and an scathing indictment of neo-liberalism – particularly so-called free trade. While the authors don’t say so explicitly the conclusion is inescapable: NAFTA kills.

What could possibly justify Trudeau’s irrational stance when it comes to promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians? In determining its policy towards Israel the Trudeau government has three apparent motivations at play: defending Israel’s right to exist, tending to Canada’s specific national interests and reflecting Canadian values.

This is the grim future under the corporate state. So grim, that the UN Conference on Trade and Development’s 2016 Annual Report was essentially a scathing denunciation of the whole Washington Consensus, blaming “[T]he entire edifice of liberal market finance…” The UN’s solution, only hinted at by those still struggling to overcome their addiction to this pernicious ideology, is as clear as neoliberalism is brutal.

It is the nature of ideology that if the medicine doesn’t work, increase the dose. Unless more Canadians speak out on these investment protection agreements and get behind their counterparts in the United States and European Union, the Liberal government will keep prescribing the same medicine.

Justin Trudeau is fond of saying “Canada is back,” and in some genuinely gratifying ways it seems to be the case. But by far the most important and substantive evidence for this claim is still missing: an indication that the new government is willing to seriously address the issue that a genuine return to normal rests upon.

The co-operation offer has until now been Elizabeth May’s response to the charge that the Greens split the vote and allow Conservatives to win in close races with the Liberals or the NDP. But the Green’s slogan in this election—”We are not splitting the vote, we are growing the vote”—reflects the fact that the co-operation offer is well and truly dead.

Justin Trudeau, the man/boy, seems to have never had an original idea in his life nor any discernible vision of the country that drives his politics. No matter how long he is on the scene as a potential PM I cannot get past reacting to him as if he is an MC at a high school prom.

Some 40 per cent of Canadians can’t be bothered to vote in federal elections, mistaking ill-informed cynicism for sophistication along the lines of “they’re all the same.” I wonder if they’ll remember that refrain 30 years from now when they have to remortgage their house to pay their medical bills.