Tents are for camping, not government

Is it really true that we, Canada, more precisely the Canadian government, has received a shipment of faulty medical masks from the Communist regency of China?

Surely this cannot be. China? Sending our country defective medical devices during a global pandemic? Unthinkable.

It is now a truth so obvious as to be received as a commonplace, that the Chinese government — to be always and emphatically distinguished from the Chinese people; do not ever confound that harrowing authoritarian government with the people it ruthlessly rules — misled the world, all 195 countries of it, on the pandemic.

Misled about its origins, lied about its dangers, punished those of its own brave doctors who warned about it, and was so audacious in its duplicity as to declare, via its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that “the risk of human-to-human transmission is low.”

This is worth an emphasis. The Chinese dictatorship not only lies to the world, it punishes those of its own citizens who tell the truth. This is speech- corruption that even Orwell never contemplated.

The Chinese regime put the health of the world at risk. As a secondary consequence, its lies ( the absolutely correct, even clinical term) and misdirections have wounded, to extremis, the economies of almost every country on the planet.

So let us ask again, can it be true that our Canadian government, finding itself without the most basic medical protective devices, would ( a) go to the source of the plague for them, (b) have any confidence that what came under the consent of its Communist government could be relied upon, and (c) should be in some state of surprise that what was sent, over one million were — this is a soft word — defective?

And should this cake want icing, recall that this Canadian government had earlier sent 16 tonnes of our own medical masks ( which were not defective) to China. Our flawless government created the shortage by sending good devices to China. Then in its boundless wisdom it attempted to remedy the self-inflicted shortage by importing defective devices — from China. There should be an award for this kind of thinking.

I beg your indulgence for a small thought experiment. Just imagine if Canada had a Parliament! I know this is a strain. A parliament is a place where the people elected to make choices for all Canadians (let us call this a government) are daily interrogated by other people, also elected (let us call them the opposition), about their heartbreakingly ludicrous decisions?

Such as, for example, going to China for medical devices during a pandemic originating from (and then denied by the Chinese government as originating from) there.

It would be really great to have a “counter- voice,” a democratic “check” during so anxious a time, and a designated venue for public challenge on matters of deepest consequence to all Canadians. Ideally, it would be a hallowed, historic, national institution, whose purpose was to express the national will and perform oversight and accountability on the government.

Further it would provide debate and deliberation, especially during the most stressful times, and most importantly, through its representative nature, reflect the entire spectrum of viewpoints from every province and region of a vast and diverse country.

By way of another example, say the leader of the government ( let us call him a prime minister) decided to allot $ 9 billion to wouldbe students. Nine billion is a lot of public money. Certainly here is an announcement we could hope would be made in a setting somewhat more formal than under a makeshift plastic tent, by a lone figure emerging from a cottage on an Ottawa morning. ( Tents are for camping, not government.)

If there were a Parliament, ( again, a mad idea in contemporary Canada, I know) this man might vigorously be asked — why this particular program? Why this particular amount? How was the decision to offer $ 9 billion to this group decided upon, as opposed to farmers, grocery clerks, truckers, family coffee shops, seniors, oil workers, dry cleaners, barbers?

And, by the way, though it really isn’t an afterthought, if there were such a Parliament, we would most likely have a period set aside for just this kind of function and this function alone: to interrogate the prime minister on his decrees, his decisions to pour taxpayers’ money in a Niagara cascade of close to $ 200 billion whenever and however it pleases him.

I would suggest calling such an interval, Question Period. And God forbid it should ever descend into theatricality or partisan byblows. That would be so gauche.

But even if it did, we would have a noble class of journalists, who themselves would never descend to theatrics or the sullen habits of partisanship, keeping watch to guarantee it remained as elevated as their own sublime and unsullied practice. We would call this group the Ottawa Parliamentary Press Gallery Inc.

Alas, the notion of an empowered Parliament in a time of national crisis is, in the truly immortal words of Sir Thomas Browne, a “dream and folly of expectation.” The idea of a national forum to keep check on our ruler, to exercise oversight on the massive dispensation of public funds, to question the decisions of our pre-noon prime minister, is, apparently, at this time simply a distraction, a waste of time, a useless clog to the impeccable functioning of a minority administration.

The reality: Parliament has been simply walked by, evanished. Is it not truly amazing how complacent the response to the death of Parliament has been? As if for the 150- plus years of our existence as a nation, it were but wallpaper, an ornamental frill. And as if its significance, its cherished status as being the beating heart and guiding soul of Canadian democracy were — to steal a phrase — nothing more than “a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Note: Please do not blame William. The extra “s” and the dropped “an” is a flourish of my own.

I beg your indulgence for a small thought experiment. Just imagine if Canada had a Parliament!