Right-wing American thinking has infiltrated Canadian politics and caused the Conservative Party to “turn their backs” on Ukraine, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.
Trudeau called out the Conservative Party after the group unanimously voted against an update to the Canada Ukraine Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Ukraine.
“I’ve actually boasted . . . that it’s not a political debate in Canada, all parties in Canada stand with Ukraine,” Trudeau said at a press conference Friday. “So it is particularly troubling to see — even though we are seeing a rise of right-wing rhetoric in the United States with MAGA conservatives, across Europe, in certain corners of right-wing politicians and parties — starting to pull their support for Ukraine. Starting to parrot Russian disinformation and misinformation and propaganda.”
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre earlier Friday said his party had voted against the agreement not because of flagging support for Ukraine, but out of concern it would saddle the war-torn country with a carbon tax.
Trudeau said that explanation was “an absurd excuse.”
“The real story is the rise of a right-wing, American MAGA-influenced thinking that has made Canadian Conservatives — who used to be among the strongest defenders of Ukraine, I’ll admit it — turn their backs on something Ukraine needs in its hour of need,” Trudeau said.
“That is the danger of the rise of the right-wing influence that is feeling its impact in Canada. That’s what not just Ukrainian Canadians but all Canadians should be concerned about. When the Conservative Party of Canada and Pierre Poilievre turn their backs on history, turn their backs on our friends and allies, turn their backs on the international rules-based order and our support for the UN Charter and territorial Integrity, it is of real concern and should be of concern to all of us, because we’re seeing that spiking up all around the world,” Trudeau said.
Earlier Friday, Poilievre said that his party was only voting against the agreement because conservatives understood how disastrous carbon taxes can be.
“We voted against Justin Trudeau forcing a carbon tax into that pre-existing agreement. Conservatives understand how devastating the carbon tax has been for Canadians,” Poilievre said. “It’s caused two million people to go to a food bank every single month, seven million Canadians not eating enough to stay healthy.”
“I really think it speaks to how pathologically obsessed Trudeau is with the carbon tax that, while the knife is at the throat of Ukrainians, he would use that to impose his carbon tax ideology on those poor people,” Poilievre said, according to CBC News.
The trade agreement includes a section committing both parties to coordinate “bilaterally and in international forums to address matters of mutual interest, as appropriate, to . . . promote carbon pricing and measures to mitigate carbon leakage risks.”
Ukraine has had a carbon tax since 2011, and it is in the process of modifying the tax as it seeks to gain membership in the EU.
It’s not the first time Trudeau has blamed American politics for pushback to liberal policies in Canada.
In July, Trudeau said the “American right-wing” was responsible for causing Canadian Muslims’ to oppose gender ideology and LGBTQ curriculum in K-12 education.
Trudeau made the comments during a visit with the Muslim community at the Baitun Nur Mosque in Calgary after hundreds of protesters rallied against gender ideology in schools, chanting, “Leave our kids alone.”
The frustration reached a boiling point after audio surfaced of an Edmonton Public Schools teacher berating Muslim students for skipping school in order to avoid Pride events.
One person in the audience asked Trudeau to “please protect our culture, our belief, the sin that you are doing to them.”
Trudeau responded: “First of all, there is an awful lot of misinformation and disinformation out there [from] people on social media, particularly fueled by the American right-wing are spreading a lot of untruths about what is actually… in the curriculum.”