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May 13, 2016baldand rated this title 1.5 out of 5 stars
This was about a three-star celebrity autobiography and a one-star political autobiography, which accounts for my overall two-star rating. On p.107, one reads “Wherever I went, there were locals. A clear majority. A mainstream. And any minorities, be they North Africans In Paris, European expats in Burkina Faso, Lebanese supermarket owners in Ivory Coast, Chinese students in Russia, Australians in Thailand, … were always ‘others’, an exception to the rule, to the national identity.” So for those looking for a celebrity biography, we get a feel for the author’s impressive range of travels. Those looking for some kind of serious analysis must be already squirming. Russia has over five million ethnic Tatars and millions of ethnic Ukrainians, so why, when he is looking for people who differ from the base does he go to ethnic Chinese, and why to university students there to study and not to the many Chinese who have permanently moved to the Russian Far East? Anyway, the big difference between Canada and every other country, according to Justin Trudeau, is we have no mainstream, no base. Of course, Canada as a country should and does reject citizenship based on ethnicity, and we don’t want to discriminate against people based on their race or religion. However, Justin Trudeau’s view of Canada seems to violate commonsense perceptions. Most places have English-speaking or French-speaking majorities. Except on Indian reserves and in Nunavut, most places still have white majorities or white pluralities and in most communities the bulk of the population is at least nominally Christian. What Justin Trudeau seems to be describing is not a reality, but an aspiration, where he wants his immigration and refugee policies to take us. On p.238 one reads “Outside Quebec, few Canadians appreciate the fall-out of the Gomery Commission within my home province.” The Gomery Commission was set up to investigate the sponsorship scandal in Quebec, when the Auditor General’s report indicated that about $100 million in contracts had gone to Liberal-friendly firms for doing little or no work, although Justin Trudeau never says anything about that. It doesn’t bode well for his first term in office. In his first term in office, does he plan to avoid corrupt practices or just commissions to investigate them?