The Liberals seem content

to let a couple more weekends at the cottage erase Philpott’s expense kerfuffle from the minds of many Canadians. The timing, really, couldn’t have been better.

If a Liberal minister has to get caught paying curiously above- market limousine fares to a company run by a vocal Liberal election volunteer, there is probably no better time than in mid-August, when Parliament isn’t sitting and a call for a formal investigation over an “apparent violation of the Conflict of Interest Act” barely piques the interest of Canadians on their summer vacations. A Liberal MP treated herself to costly luxuries at the expense of the taxpayer? Yawn. We still have a few more weeks of summer; can’t this stuff just wait until September? Surely we’ll have a fresh, new example of Liberal entitlement to obsess over then.

Those who annoyingly insist on paying attention, however, have deemed this the rebirth of the “Limousine Liberals”: Canada’s health minister spends $ 1,700 on a single day of limousine travel within the Greater Toronto Area back in March, and $1,994 on another day — paid to the same company — again in July. Only after the expenses are revealed publicly does Health Minister Jane Philpott concede that the expenses were “inappropriate” and belatedly offers to pay back some — but not all — of the inexplicably high transportation charges.

For many Liberal critics, it is deliciously tempting to quip “Canada is back!” in response to this apparent revival of Grit indulgence, but as they have previously pointed out in other situations — somewhat less facetiously, mind you — Canada never went anywhere in the first place. Indeed, in the years between Liberal governments, Canada has watched its ministers sip $ 16 glasses of orange juice, build pretty gazebos in their ridings, have search-and-rescue helicopters pick them up from fishing trips and, of course, seen a couple of Conservative Senators buoyantly bill the taxpayer for everything from dubious secondary residences to makeup artists and personal trainers. Entitlement is, generally speaking, a non-partisan illness, with the only treatment being media attention — which generally wears off in about two-to-three weeks.

What makes Philpott’s particular extravagance a little more peculiar than the average example of ministerial indulgence is twofold: first, as mentioned earlier, the recipient of her vast overpayments happens to be a longtime Liberal volunteer; and second, she previously told Parliament that she had not used rented limousines on official business, which now appears to be untrue.

Philpott has not responded to questions from the Nation- al Post about the fact that the owner of the limousine company previously volunteered for her campaign, though her office has conceded that the minister knew of the connection. That detail — and lack of further elaboration — obviously makes the exorbitant price tag for the trips all the more eyebrow- raising. It is one thing for a minister to pay well above the market rate for some sort of product or service and plead ignorance (how much could a banana cost — $10?), but it’s quite another to pay above and beyond the sticker price knowing the recipient previously helped hand out Liberal brochures. A minister can’t realistically be expected to avoid doing business with each and every person who might’ve once supported her campaign, but she certainly should avoid the perception that she could be tossing him a few extra bucks.

That said, the notion that Philpott might have misled Parliament about her limo expenses is perhaps most troubling of all. In response to a question by Conservative MP Dan Albas, Philpott’s office said in June that, “With regard to government travel, for the period of Nov. 3, 2015, to April 22, 2016, the minister of health did not use rented limousines while on official business, within Canada or elsewhere.”

The only plausible explanations for this patently false assertion is: 1) Philpott signed the order paper without paying close attention to the statement; 2) her office was deliberately misleading Parliament; or 3) she is playing cute with semantics, taking cover behind the belief that she rented a “sedan,” not a “limo” — a distinction that her spokesperson attempted to draw when the story first broke. Not one of those explanations reflects particularly well on Philpott, who has, until now, proven to be a rather fine minister.

The road to everyone forgetting about this kerfuffle in the next two- tothree weeks necessitated some sort of reimbursement from Philpott’s own pocket, though that hasn’t resolved the lingering questions about Liberal backscratching and the apparent misleading of Parliament. To soothe those itches, the Liberals seem content to let a couple more weekends at the cottage erase this scandal from the minds of many Canadians. The timing, really, couldn’t have been better.

WASTED MONEY, APPARENT KICKBACKS, MISLEADING PARLIAMENT — THANK GOD NO ONE’S PAYING ATTENTION.