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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is snorkelling at depths of unpopularity that rival those of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, shortly before the PC Party of old was obliterated in the 1993 national election.

Trudeaus Liberals now stand at 22 per cent support among Canadians, according to the latest Abacus poll. This is barely above the NDP, and far below Pierre Poilievres Conservatives who enjoy the support of 42 per cent of Canadians. Under the rules of our electoral system, this is wipeout territory for the Liberals.

This raises the question: why does the Liberal Party continue to tolerate a leader that is dragging them into the cellar? Why doesnt the party give Trudeau a pink slip? Besides some grumpy senators and Liberal-aligned columnists, there is virtually no effort nor movement intent on and working to give the leader the boot.

Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has gradually remade the Liberal Party in his own image.

The Liberal Party of Canada is one of the most successful if not the most successful parties in the history of the democratic world. The party of old would never have tolerated a leader who appeared to be pushing it to electoral oblivion.

So how is Trudeau still holding on?

Heres one answer: Trudeau is still leader because hes not the leader of the Liberal Party of Old. Rather, hes the leader of the Justin Party.

Hear me out. Between 2006 and 2015, the Liberal Party well and truly fell apart in terms of leadership, organization and finances. Paul Martin, Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff led the Liberals to three resounding defeats in this period.

This culminated in the 2011 election in which the party plumbed new depths, falling behind Jack Laytons NDP to third place. It seemed like, as the Liberal Party disintegrated, the Canadian party system was transforming before our eyes, and that the once-dominant Liberal Party would become a minor party of the centre, much like the U.K.s Liberal Democrats.

Trudeau is the person that changed that historical trajectory, sweeping the Liberal Party back into power in 2015 in a remarkable and unexpected victory. The Liberals won in 2015, not on the basis of Liberal popularity, but rather on the basis of Trudeaus own appeal and sunny ways campaigning.

In 2015, Trudeau rescued a party that was well and truly broken and proceeded to remake it in his own image. And that continued well into Trudeaus time as prime minister.

What has Trudeaus remaking of the Liberal Party consisted of? Over his time in office, the Liberal Party has become much more ideologically left-wing and has come to more closely reflect Trudeaus own socially progressive politics. The Liberals have largely ceased being a brokerage party, willing to veer to both the left and right as the party did throughout Canadian history. The partys current agreement with the NDP fits the new Liberals like a glove.

Dont believe me? My students are often mystified to hear that, prior to Trudeau, the Liberal caucus had a sizable and at times influential pro-life contingent in its caucus. The party a big broad tent tolerated these MPs, and they in turn remained within the party and contributed to broadening the tent.

But Trudeau ended that in 2014, proclaiming that any Liberal MP would need to vote the pro-choice line on any abortion bill, or be booted from the party. On a whole range of issues (especially social issues), Trudeau sought ideological conformity rather than encouraging a broad range of perspectives.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Trudeau has dragged the party to the left, ended brokerage politics, and left his own policy stamp on the Liberals. This became particularly true after the departure of Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who was likely one of the last of the business Liberals of old, in 2020. Morneau is now publicly critical of the new Liberal Party, and the power of Morneaus old faction is virtually nil in the party.

The Liberal Party has also become more stylistically Trudeaupian over time. Trudeaus approach to politics, both good and bad, can be detected across his front bench. Almost every Liberal MP has never served under a leader other than Trudeau. And, for a surprisingly high number of Canadians, he is the only Liberal prime minister they have ever lived under.

The prime minister has also flexed the Justinian muscle to maintain control over his party. Cabinet ministers who have come up against the leader have either slowly or quickly found themselves sidelined. Just ask Morneau, or former ministers Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson- Raybould. Trudeaus grip on the party has strengthened, not weakened, over time.

The Liberal Party of old would never have tolerated Trudeaus low polling numbers and would have found some way to show him the door. But this isnt the Liberal Party of old, its the Justin Party. And this new partys inability to adapt in changing circumstances might lead it straight into electoral disaster in the coming election.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.

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Justin is the perfect leader of the Justin Party Winnipeg Free Press - Winnipeg Free Press

As Democrats make their case to voters around the country this fall, one challenge is that some of the bluest parts of the country cities on the West Coast are a mess.

Centrist voters can reasonably ask: Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction?

Ill try to answer that question in a moment, but liberals like me do need to face the painful fact that something has gone badly wrong where were in charge, from San Diego to Seattle. Im an Oregonian who bores people at cocktail parties by singing the praises of the West, but the truth is that too often we offer a version of progressivism that doesnt result in progress.

We are more likely to believe that housing is a human right than conservatives in Florida or Texas, but less likely to actually get people housed. We accept a yawning gulf between our values and our outcomes.

Conservatives argue that the problem is simply the left. Michael Shellenberger wrote a tough book denouncing what he called San Fransicko with the subtitle Why Progressives Ruin Cities. Yet that doesnt ring true to me.

Democratic states enjoy a life expectancy two years longer than Republican states. Per capita G.D.P. in Democratic states is 29 percent higher than in G.O.P. states, and child poverty is lower. Education is generally better in blue states, with more kids graduating from high school and college. The gulf in well-being between blue states and red states is growing wider, not narrower.

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Opinion | What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast? - The New York Times

For young, secular, politically progressive men and women, having children has become something of an afterthought. Liberal conventional wisdom encourages people to spend their 20s on journeys of personal and professional self-discovery and self-fulfillment. Children are treated as a bonus round, something to get to only after completing a long list of achievements: getting a degree, forging a satisfying and well-established career, buying a house, cultivating the ideal romantic partnership.

The standards of readiness for family are at once so high and so vague that its hardly a surprise when people fail to reach them. Indeed, the data suggest that people are having children later than they used to and are having fewer than theyd like.

For progressives, waiting to have children has also become a kind of ethical imperative. Gender equality and female empowerment demand that womens self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood. Securing female autonomy means that under no circumstances should a woman be rushed into a reproductive decision whether by an eager partner or tone-deaf chatter about ticking biological clocks. Unreserved enthusiasm for having children can come across as essentially reactionary.

Over the past four years, weve conducted interviews and surveys with hundreds of young Americans about their attitudes toward having children. These conversations revealed that the success narratives of modern liberal life leave little room for having a family. Women who want kids often come to that realization belatedly, at some point in their early 30s the so-called panic years. If they are lucky, their partner (if they have one) will fall in line. If they are not, they face a choice of returning to the dating pool, freezing their eggs (if they havent done so already), single parenting or giving up their hope of having kids of their own.

In this way, the logic of postponement that has been promoted by liberals and progressives and bolstered by overblown optimism about reproductive technologies robs young people of their agency. How many children they have, and even whether they have them at all, is increasingly a decision made for them by circumstance and cultural convention.

This is not just a recipe for unhappiness; it also reflects a deep confusion. There is nothing inherently unprogressive about embracing the prospect of children. Even Simone de Beauvoir, the philosopher who was among the first to critique reproduction and family as instruments for the oppression of women, acknowledged that shaping the character and intellect of another human being was the most delicate and the most serious undertaking of all. While certain conservative visions of family life such as trad wives and Silicon Valley pronatalism no doubt have little to offer those on the left, our fellow progressives need to stop thinking of having children as a conservative hobbyhorse and reclaim it for what it is: a fundamental human concern.

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Opinion | Whats Stopping Liberals From Having Kids? - The New York Times

Its hard to imagine a clearer violation of journalistic ethics than pretending to hold beliefs you dont, asking Supreme Court justices if they agree, and surreptitiously recording their answers at a no-media dinner. The novelty of the stunt, however, shouldnt distract us from the real takeaway, which is precisely that the recordings yielded nothing we didnt already know.

The key conclusions are that Justice Samuel Alito is a religious man; his wife Martha-Ann likes political flags; and Chief Justice John Roberts is genuinely committed to the (somewhat unrealistic) idea that only elected officials not judges should make moral decisions.

The recording was obtained by liberal documentarian Lauren Windsor at the annual dinner of the Supreme Court Historical Society, itself a rather misunderstood event. As someone whos been to the dinner (I was the speaker one year after writing a book on Supreme Court history) let me try to set the scene.

The dinner is a reasonably accessible way for a non-billionaire to hobnob with the justices: Anyone who buys a $500 ticket can attend, which is how Windsor got in. That might sound like a lot of money, but its much less than many non-rich people pay to go to sporting events or Taylor Swift concerts.

Yet the dinner feels elite. The dress code is black tie. The cause supporting the societys work on the history of the court is worthy, but niche. And the dinner, which is supposed to be off the record, takes place in the great hall of the Supreme Court building, all marble and very grand.

The key point is that, at the dinner, the justices are comfortably at home (its their office, after all). They are also, to a degree, the effective hosts of the event. They seem relaxed and friendly, and they get to be real people. Or at least, they used to now they will have to know they can be recorded by their guests.

Windsor got Justice Alito to say that in contemporary America, there can be a way of living together peacefully, but its difficult because there are differences on fundamental things that really cant be compromised. Um, yes? That statement seems incontrovertibly true.

The false-flag journalist then insisted that people who believe in God must keep fighting to return our country to a place of godliness. Alito agreed. Although godliness here is left vague, its hard to imagine a genuinely God-fearing person answering otherwise.

As for Mrs. Alito, she of the scores of flags flown at two homes, the most the provocateur could get was that she had been considering flying a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag to respond to a Pride flag in her neighborhood during June but that her husband had asked her Oh please, dont put up a flag. The exchange appeared to confirm Alitos letter to two senators in which he essentially said that his wife likes flying flags and all he can do is ask her not to.

As for Roberts, the chief responded to Windsors prompts by giving his patented mini-lecture about how justices are just lawyers who shouldnt take moral right and wrong into account. He also firmly rejected the suggestion that the US is a Christian nation and that the justices should be guided by that idea.

Its hard to see how a court could make decisions about racial equality or abortion rights or gun control without taking some kind of moral stand. Justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were great, morally driven advocates for equality who carried their moral values into their Supreme Court service. Even Justice Neil Gorsuch, a non-moral textualist by his own account, is clearly morally motivated in Indian law cases by the profound injustices done to the tribes over centuries. That seems praiseworthy, at least to me.

Justices are human beings, not machines. We should allow them to be humans, even at social events. And we should grow out of the fantasy of justices as perfectly impartial automatons free of human fallibility.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People.

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Column: Secret audio of Alito isn't the smoking gun liberals think - The Virginian-Pilot

Premier Jeremy Rockliff has done nothing to ease very serious concerns about Tasmania's future as the gateway to the Antarctic, placing thousands of jobs and hundreds-of-millions dollars' worth of economic opportunity at risk.

A letter from the Federal Government to the Premier has revealed that government business TasPorts is "determined to stand in the way" of critical infrastructure at Macquarie Wharf, by not only failing to progress the upgrades needed to berth the new icebreaker, but also attempting to increase charges to the Antarctic Division by more than 14 times what is currently paid.

The Premier was asked by the Federal Government earlier this year to intervene on this critical issue, but he did nothing.

Today the Premier revealed his head was still firmly stuck in the sand, and that he would continue to let TasPorts hold our economy to ransom.

The situation is a perfect example of two major failings of this Liberal government - their failure to deliver on key infrastructure projects, and their failure to recognise that government business enterprises are key economic drivers not just cash cows, just like we've seen with Hydro.

Dean Winter MP

Labor Leader

Link:
Antarctic Jobs Threatened by Liberals' Delivery Failure - Mirage News