In today’s episode of WE, it’s all in the family

GOVERNMENT BEGINS TO FEEL LIKE IT’S JUST A PRIVATE AFFAIR. — REX MURPHY

Margaret, are you grieving

Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

(Voice over by Stacy Keach): “The WE saga – Episode 4: All in the Family”

It’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wisdom that’s so endearing, that and his open willingness and generosity to see all the rest of us are brought in and given the opportunity to learn from his mistakes. Every misstep of our prime minister thus becomes a stepping stone for our improvement. How neat is that.

We have now come to know that the embroilment of the prime minister and Kielburger Inc. was “unfortunate” and that is very sad. But there is no cloud however murky that does not have its tinsel lining. As I am sure our prime minister anticipated, the WE deal has been a great learning experience for us all, a milestone “teachable moment.” And worth every penny.

We Canadians will learn at lot from this, as we did during the Aga Khan affair (Lessons: (a) Canadians should not vacation with billionaires; (b) take a pass on helicopter rides from your host) and likewise from the SNC-Lavalin mess (Lessons: (a) Canadians should never harass or pressure their justice minister in the performance of her duties; (b) especially when a Quebec corporation, of dubious practice, is having legal difficulties).

Speak true now. Haven’t all of us taken those lessons to heart? In my own case, for example — why, I haven’t spoken to the Aga Khan for months. Nor, more surprisingly, has he spoken to me.

As for the current delirium, well, let’s just say that after all of this when I next get my hands on $900 million, it certainly won’t be going up Kielburger street for a massage, that’s for sure.

The WE business is a scandal. But it is a scandal within a bigger and more enduring one: the elimination of Parliament during this now near four-month long COVID-19 lockdown.

We threw Parliament away. Or rather Trudeau, with the cynical compliance of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, his equally bespoked partner in this affair, threw Parliament away, put it under wraps, eviscerated it.

As a result the Trudeau minority has had the least-challenged, most under-scrutinized, press-cosseted administration in decades. Money is being carted away by front-end loaders every morning when Trudeau descends the steps and enters the Tent of Commons to the huddle of scribes under its shade.

There is no opposition present. There is no Question Period in the afternoons of his wild gifting of the billions. Just J.T., 20 minutes a morning, affectedly sombre, soft-speaking the cliché of the day (“we have your back”) and then signalling the heavy machinery to come in and to scoop up billions to scatter them through the land.

COVID-19 has been the Trudeau government’s umbrella and shield. Government has exploited the cover it has given them — perfect freedom to completely ignore the customs and procedures of Parliamentary democracy. Under that meretricious license it has exhausted the treasury, swollen the deficit to $343 billion and the national debt to $1.2 trillion.

With historic amounts going out, and no one really putting a check on him, it is not difficult to see how Trudeau could so casually, almost blandly, make one more flighty announcement — wasn’t even a full billion after all — for the Kielburger organizations (plural, note) without a second or a first scruple.

It’s all grown so casual, so normal, why it’s almost robotic. Without Parliament that’s what happens. Government begins to feel like it’s just a private affair, all in the family.

And so there is no mystery, no enigma as some are suggesting, as to why Trudeau didn’t consider the propriety of assigning nearly a billion dollars to the Kielburgers for dispersal; notwithstanding his own, his wife’s, his mother’s, his brother’s variant ties with the singular operations of WE.

No surprise, either, that there wasn’t even the slightest breeze of a thought that this might be, was, a blatant conflict of interest and cronyism of the highest order.

Drop Parliament, and you drop all restraint, all questioning, all prudence — and you leave uninhibited the instincts of a prime minister who equates what he thinks to progress, what he feels to policy, and all is therefore lawful, praiseworthy, not to be scrutinized and wonderful.

Hence the Kielburger/ Trudeau family soap opera. You pass a billion-dollar program to some buddies of yours, that you not only have worked with — you have been the highlight of their WE Day school rallies, the star on the program numerous times. You pass a billion-dollar program to some of your buddies your wife has had a partnership with, and your mother has spoken 28 times at their festivals, and your brother eight times. You are almost part of the brand.

There’s no mystery here at all. Things are so cosy in government these days, so casual and unchallenged, the PM so comfortable in his Cottage Life-style governance, something like this was fated to happen.

IT’S ALL GROWN SO CASUAL, SO NORMAL, WHY IT’S ALMOST ROBOTIC.