Maryam Monsef serves a party that claims to be focused on the prosperity and security of Canadians, particularly the middle class (and those working hard to join it!), while not knowing her own salary to within the nearest $20,000.

TRUDEAU’S CABINET IS RUNNING LOW ON USEFUL TALENTS.

— MATT GURNEY

If you ever find yourself wondering why it seems that virtually every important, difficult task that needs doing in the federal government ends up getting dumped onto poor, overworked Chrystia Freeland, pay no heed to the whispers from a few months ago, when it was suggested that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, worried that he might be replaced, chose to load up Freeland with so much work that she couldn’t possibly challenge him for the top job. There really is a more mundane explanation: Trudeau doesn’t exactly have a world- beating group of allstars in his cabinet, so the rare competent ones have to carry more than their fair share of the burden.

Consider the latest flub by Maryam Monsef, Trudeau’s minister of … uhh … hang on, let me Google this … women and gender equality and rural economic development, portfolios she was deep- sixed into after she made a complete hash of the government’s commitment to electoral reform, with an entirely forgettable ( indeed, forgotten) stop at international development along the way. Monsef, perhaps most famous for her fatuous and mocking display of a mathematical formula for vote weighting, for which she eventually apologized, was participating in a parliamentary session Monday via video conference when she, her microphone very much turned on, began musing to someone off camera about how much money she makes.

“The question they’re gonna ask me — how much do I make now? Like 250?” Monsef was heard saying, much to the obvious amusement of her House colleagues.

The answer, for those who might be wondering, is $269,800 in salary, a combined sum that reflects her cabinet duties on top of her salary as a member of Parliament. ( There would also be expenses and a living allowance, as the Ontario MP does not represent a riding in the capital region.) Many will deem this too much, and insist that the salaries of public-office holders be lowered. We should resist that impulse to veer into our all-too- Canadian default cheapness; our elected politicians work insanely long and difficult hours, and paying them peanuts is a very good way to only ever draw in candidates who are already so wealthy that they view public service as a sidebar or hobby. (Do you want a Parliament composed only of urban lawyers or Morneau Shepell alumnus? Me neither.)

So it’s not about the money. I have no qualms with paying our elected officials well, even if, as in this particular case, one can fairly wonder if we’re getting value for money. It’s about Monsef serving a party that claims to be entirely focused on the economic prosperity and security of Canadians, particularly the middle class ( and those working hard to join it!), while not knowing her own salary to within the nearest $ 20,000. As Zi- Ann Lum noted in Huffpost Canada, Monsef is pulling in, in salary alone, more than four times the median wage in her riding of Peterborough— Kawartha. She blew her guesstimate of her own salary by what one of her constituents, earning the median, would earn in four months.

Monsef ’s hot- mic gaffe is particularly amusing because the matter at hand had been an NDP motion calling for a new tax on Canadians with fortunes over $ 20 million (side note: it’s useful to know the NDP is fine with Canadians whose fortunes range as high as $ 19,999,999.99). The cringe- factor of Monsef voting against a wealth tax while spitballing, wrongly, about her own paycheque is, even by 2020 standards, fairly high. NDP Twitter meme creators: enjoy!

Is this the end of the world? No. It’s an embarrassing gaffe; they happen and are forgotten, as this one will be. With the United States in political disarray and the second wave threatening to overwhelm hospitals across this country, the latest self-inflicted wound by one of this government’s less- impressive ministers won’t take up too much bandwidth, and shouldn’t. Monsef has indeed done Canadians a service by demonstrating something important: in the era of Zoom and Teams — take it from me, a guy with a radio show and an occasionally acid tongue — always assume every microphone is on, because one day, your career might hang in the balance if one of them actually is.

In the meantime, while Monsef searches for the perfect mathematical formula to calculate her monthly budget, the only serious thought I’d ask Canadians to keep in mind is that the pandemic, the economic fallout from it and all the various other crises popping up around the world have stretched the capacity of our federal government to the very limit. We are running an institution that normally operates at a pace that could be charitably deemed “languid,” at speeds that probably aren’t long sustainable.

This very much includes the executive, where a cabinet increasingly short on genuine talents is responsible for steering our country through a variety of overlapping emergencies. The problem here isn’t that Monsef doesn’t know how much she makes or how a mute button works. It’s not even how much money she makes. It’s that she holds real power in a government dealing with the greatest crisis this country has faced since Hitler’s Panzers held dominion from Brest to the outskirts of Moscow.

Let that thought sink in. And never again wonder why Freeland does most everything that matters. Who else is left?

government is running at speeds that aren’t long sustainable.