Troubleshooting
Liberals home for Christmas with tailored message.
So, you’re walking down Elm Street, Anytown, N.S., minding your own business, when some vaguely familiar guy gets in stride and insists on apprising you of the endless benefits of the Canada Child Benefit.
Other than possibly being late wherever you may be going, there is nothing to fear from this unnatural behaviour or from the clearly obsessed hawker. The poor guy is just following orders.
He’s vaguely familiar because he is your Member of Parliament, unless you are on the South Shore, in which case you’re waylaid by a woman, Nova Scotia’s one and only female MP Bernadette Jordan, who is also well-equipped to fully engage in bon mots about the one big feather in the federal Liberal cap.
From coast-to-coast-to-coast, as we say as if by sheer repetition all our northern claims will come true, Liberal MPs are home this week with clear instructions that you, voting Canadians, shall know the good the government is doing.
Hence, the obsession with the Child Benefit, because after that the accomplishments get a little foggy.
Two years in, a government suddenly realizes it has two years to go and if the next two go by as fast as the last, without more to show for it, they could be in trouble.
Hence, your detainer has on his (or her) person, reams of cue cards containing “talking points” carefully crafted in the Prime Minister’s Office and duly distributed to three-quarters of the national Liberal caucus. The other quarter seems insulted by the suggestion that they need crib notes.
A goodly number of those points must be designed to skilfully steer you away from any of several current issues you may want to address with your Liberal MP.
For example, one cheat sheet may say: “Everything you heard about Liberal tax reform is inaccurate. If you heard it from a Liberal, you misheard it. Finance Minister Bill Morneau is the champion of the middle class, and if you don’t believe me you can track him down at his French villa and ask him.”
The finance minister and how he handles his personal finances is an incidental issue. Canadians are more concerned with how he handles theirs. A poll by Forum Research found that more Canadians – 44 per cent – think he is ineffective than effective – 30 per cent. The other 26 per cent think Bill Morneau is a defenceman for the St. Louis Blues.
The anonymous author of above atypical talking point accidentally betrayed the nagging problem Canadians have with the federal Liberals. When the nagging becomes unbearable, we will go so far as to throw them to the curb even if it means taking a chance on Stephen Harper. Well, maybe not that far, at least not again.
The problem is that whole upper-crust, Canadian establishment, exclusive club thing the federal Liberals always seem to have going on, and when it gets out of hand the other hand seems to be scratching someone’s back. Long memories are thinking sponsorship scandal.
Most Canadians still like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, despite the fundraisers where folks with enough cash rub his elbow and see his socks up close, or the family flight to the Aga Khan’s island in Paradise. Speaking of Paradise, your MP will have a cue card on the papers of the same name. It will state something like: “No one has anything to hide because no one broke the law.”
Back to the prime minister. We like him because the world likes him and by extension us, and we like to be liked. Admit it Canada. We can’t resist popularity.
President Trump likes the prime minister, and say what you will about Trump, it is always smart to stay on the good side of an erratic man with thousands of nuclear warheads at his command. Nevertheless, the federal Grits feel like they need to do a little downhome politicking. The pollsters have them slipping into minority government territory and the NDP has a shiny new leader in Jagmeet Singh who might just catch on in large parts of the nation.
Whether Liberal MPs take their homework seriously, while I obviously don’t, is up to them.
When we send an MP to Ottawa, we trust that he or she can discuss the record of their government without a note from the teacher. Apparently, the teacher’s not so sure.