PM thinks he can wave hand to change things

Time is needed to consult Canadians, sell a vision, draft legislation, debate

We like our political leaders to be decisive, inspiring and on the side of the people. We also like our TV stars that way, if you believe the enduring popularity of President Josiah Bartlett from the West Wing or even that designated survivor guy Kiefer Sutherland.

Practically, real life is not like the snappy “walk and talk” dialogue of Hollywood political shows where the leader intones “we’ll get this done quickly, damn the torpedoes.” Politics is usually a slower and more laborious effort known less by sound bites than by dogged hard work.

Which brings us to modern Ottawa. Start with a dashing leader who wears cute socks and has a taxpayer-paid photographer who runs ahead of him to record his seemingly random photobombing.

Now, add the lines from Central Casting: “I make promises because I believe in them,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau points out regularly.

And there have been promises.

A promise to bring 25,000 refugees to Canada in just eight weeks. Everyone knew it was an impossible goal from the start, but the PM — signalling his virtue with a lofty plan that flopped — got marks for trying really, really hard.

Besides, the fallback position of taking a few more months to get things right was what sensible people had been urging all along.

The glib promise that “the 2015 election was the last federal election using a firstpast-the-post voting system” fell apart by last fall. Overhauling 150 years of election law and voting preferences doesn’t just happen because the PM firmly set his jaw in a photo op.

It was one thing to promise the full legalization of cannabis, but quite another to proclaim on “Weed Day” last year at the United Nations that in 800 days Canada would be selling pot in public, monitoring every purchase from “seed to sale” and having short-staffed police agencies enforce a complex set of laws yet to be implemented.

This week, as the police and some provinces wisely suggested taking a few extra months to do the job right, what’s the hurry? It’s not as if pot smokers have to be rescued from raging waters in the nick of time by a heroic Justin Trudeau personally commanding government helicopters.

Now there’s a looming corporate tax policy that not only dabbles in class warfare, but rushes to do it quickly by promising to stop those greedy, rich small businesses and farmers from using their corporations as “tax shelters” to find “loopholes” to pay less tax.

Springing a public consultation on people in the middle of July, the PM has been clear that he intends to make the corporate tax changes this year, come hell or high water.

Just this week, Mr. Trudeau was still lecturing us that a corporation with an income of $250,000 pays less tax than a wage earner making $50,000. While technically correct, by the time any money in a corporation gets to its owners the taxes to be paid are far higher. Trudeau knows this. The National Post has reported that he’s been a director of at least three corporations, including a holding company set up to invest his seven-figure inheritance and another company he used for his public speaking business.

It is clear by now that Justin Trudeau intends in a big, bold and quick way to leave Canada considerably different than he found it.

But why the unreasonably short and unworkable time limits?

If his policy choices are principled and pragmatic — particularly with the benefit of a majority government — why not take the time to sound out Canadians, engage, sell people on a vision, then draft legislation and have a debate?

But that takes so long. And it isn’t the way it’s done on TV.