Canada Day a microcosm of Liberals’ actions

For those looking to build national pride, Canada’s 150th birthday celebration has represented a ready-made opportunity for cheerleading. For anybody more interested in using the public purse toward more functional ends, it’s always risked turning into an example of frivolity run amok.

Last week, we finally got to see which interpretation of Canada’s sesquicentennial would win out. And the centrepiece of the national project turned into a disturbing microcosm of the general mindset of our federal government.

For an image-conscious prime minister and his cadre of VIPs, Canada Day went exactly as intended: slick, celebrity-laden and rich with photo opportunities. Having won power at just the right time to take centre stage, Justin Trudeau took advantage of the occasion to weave Liberal talking points into a widely-broadcasted show of nationalism.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives found their own trumped-up political outrage in Trudeau’s inadvertent omission of Alberta from a list of provinces and territories.

But the general public, which had been encouraged to travel to Ottawa to be a part of the event, had much less to take away from it.

Hundreds of thousands of people from across Canada descended on our nation’s capital to participate. But once they arrived, visitors were trapped in security lines for five hours or more before being able to attend the main events on Parliament Hill.

(And it’s worth noting how selective the security actually was. It’s for the best that there were no incidents, but the people corralled into narrow spaces before any screening had taken place were surely put at far more risk than could have been avoided.)

Some particularly unfortunate tourists wasted hours in what they were later told weren’t lines at all. And a video setup intended as a backup plan for the overflow crowd malfunctioned.

Once it became clear that the opening celebration hadn’t been planned to accommodate anywhere near the number of people who wanted to attend, the Parliamentary Protective Service sent out updates suggesting that people go elsewhere rather than trying to get to Parliament Hill. Needless to say, this would have been useful guidance before people spent their time and money travelling to the Ottawa festivities in the first place.

Of the half a million people expected to visit Ottawa for the day, a maximum of 31,000 were permitted on Parliament Hill at any time. And those who braved hours of waiting to do so found still more unfortunate surprises waiting, including the fact that they would have to wait a similar length of time to get to the single snack tent on site.

Yet tourism authorities declared the day a success because Ottawa’s hotels and restaurants were full. In other words, all was well regardless of whether the Canadian public got what it was promised — just as long as businesses were able to profit.

In sum, Canada’s 150th birthday party was presented as being for everybody. And the large number of people who did attend signals ample public interest in taking up the invitation.

But it was designed to include far less than the number of people who wanted to participate. Even the lucky few who made it into the gates were left with less than what they anticipated. And at the end of the day, the Liberals and the corporate sector got what they wanted — while mere citizens went away disappointed.

Unfortunately, that description applies equally to both the thought processes behind many of the Trudeau government’s actions, and the resulting outcomes. And we won’t truly have cause for celebration until our collective aspirations are actually reflected in how we’re governed. Fingas is a Regina lawyer, blogger and freelance political commentator who has written about provincial and national issues from a progressive NDP perspective since 2005. His column appears every week.

Tourists wasted hours in what they were later told weren’t lines at all.