From me To we To whoops, we got caught
They weren’t just lies. they were obvious lies
The banana is a berry. unlike the raspberry. I mention this quirky fact because we need something fun to say about replacing the maple leaf with a banana on our flag and there isn’t much.
Consider this kerfuffle over the prime minister handing a billion-dollar contract to his buddies at We Charity then, when caught, emitting a cloud of sweet-smelling nonsense. What’s worrisome isn’t the misconduct, the pettiness or even the lies. It’s the resignation, the feeling that they’re going to get away with it and we all know it. When liberty and integrity die in the hearts of citizens, democracies die.
It seems a petty thing to finish it off. Not with a bang but a whimper. But the key thing about “banana republics” isn’t that they’re misgoverned. It’s that the citizens expect them to be, and only quarrels periodically about who will do the misgoverning.
The quarrels are sharp, because misgovernment matters. But short, because misgovernment is inevitable and not even his friends can trust a dictator anyway.
There’s a popular saying in Latin America that evidently originated with Oscar R. Benavides, who seized power in Peru in 1914 and was also president from 1933-39 without the tedious requirement of winning an election: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.” And when I say it’s popular, I don’t mean people in Latin America approve of it. I mean they know it fits. Resignedly.
By contrast there was a time, in the Anglosphere at least, when cleaning up scandals was a problem only when people didn’t know the facts. Richard Nixon, for instance, could only ride out Watergate as long as he could keep the details from the public.
With Bill Clinton, things changed. everybody knew what he’d done, including graphic details unprintable in an earlier “expletive deleted” era. They just didn’t care. They found it funny. As Bob dole whimpered, “Where’s the outrage?” And yes, if all you people fuming about donald Trump hadn’t chuckled indulgently at the Big dawg’s antics, there’d be more outrage now. But enough about the united States, on which the world remains queasily fixated as freedom’s last best hope. Let’s talk about Canada.
Our government, which nowadays pretty much means the prime minister, gave a $900-million sole-source contract to his buddies the Kielburgers. When objections were raised, we were told We was the only organization in the country that could pay volunteers to volunteer on that scale. Which wasn’t just a lie, it was an obvious lie. Canada has a vast public service that manages to hand out some $300 billion a year with something often approaching rudimentary competence. The prime minister throws in another billion or so nearly every day and they spend it. They could have spent this billion, too.
We were also told that same public service had recommended the secular saints at We as the only folks around who could hand out money this way. Which wasn’t just a lie, it was an obvious lie. Marc Kielburger was even caught on tape boasting that, the day after announcing the spending, “the Prime Minister’s Office kindly called us and said: ‘you know that announcement we just made, would you be interested in helping us actually implement?’” Then he said he “misspoke,” a classic Nixonian verb, and the call really came from employment and Social development Canada a week later. yeah. That’s the ticket. Which wasn’t just a lie, it was an obvious lie. Who thinks the PM’S office phoned immediately with a big sack of loot when it didn’t? especially if you’ve already got lots of sole-source contracts from a prime minister who, along with his wife, is a regular at your events?
Now we’re told the contract wasn’t really sole-sourced, the public service had been considering other outfits who could give away $900 million and have people take it. Which wasn’t just a lie, it was an obvious lie. When asked, they were unable to say who they’d been considering. d’oh.
For his part, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “Obviously, the way this situation unfolded has been unfortunate.” Which wasn’t just a lie, it was an obvious lie. The only fortunate thing about this situation is the way it unfolded, namely he got caught.
If it was his first rodeo, we might put it down to naive enthusiasm. But he has a long trail of such unfortunate events and, again, we all know it. From the Aga Khan vacation to Snc-lavalin to blackface and the Kokanee grope, Trudeau thinks he gets everything and his enemies get the law.
does he? Are we governed by a man on horseback and resigned to it? do we put a berry in place of a leaf on our flag? Or do we brush aside his silly lies, bring back Parliament and save the banana for lunch?
now we’re told the contract wasn’t really sole-sourced.