Canadians aren’t chumps about chump change

If you’re one of those hard-working members of Canada’s middle class whom all the federal parties tried to woo during the last election, you probably have yet to feel the tax cut the Liberals delivered.

The problem is, depending on your tax and income bracket, that promise will be realized so gradually you could be forgiven for not realizing you’re richer than you think.

This lack of appreciation by Canadian taxpayers may seem unfair to the Liberals. But I’m guessing the Liberals aren’t crying themselves to sleep over it, if only because they know more injustice is on the way.

That’s because of an unwritten law of Canadian politic that says while taxpayers may not notice when minuscule amounts of their money is given back to them, they manage nevertheless to be extremely perceptive when comparably small amounts are spent on stupidities. And that sensitivity was activated over the past seven days by two examples of nickel and dime entitlements exercised by cabinet ministers.

Just when it seemed the dust was settling over the nearly $4,000 of public cash Health Minister Jane Philpott spent on limousine rides, the Conservative opposition discovered the minister also decided to bill taxpayers $520 for access to Air Canada executive airport lounges in North America and Europe. Philpott acknowledges the charges are excessive and pledged to pay them out of her own pocket (which, given her salary tops $240,000 annually, shouldn’t be too hard to bear).

So far, so good (or at least not too devastatingly bad). But then the spotlight shifted to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, whose department hired a freelance photographer more than $10,000 (or $7,000, there being some confusion over whether the bill was submitted in dollars or euros) to record the contribution made by the minister and her staff at the environment summit in Paris last December.

This most recent dubious expense led to recollections of how an investigation by iPolitics found the Harper Conservatives spent more than $2.3 million to photograph their cabinet ministers during their decade in power. And, inevitably, there were flashbacks to the days when Tory cabinet minister Bev Oda put herself on the map thanks to a thorough appreciation of orange juice.

But as countless generations of parents have told countless generations of bickering offspring, it doesn’t matter who started it, what matters is that it finishes. And as those of us outside of Canada’s political bubble (that is, the taxpayers who fund its daily operations) can attest, it never finishes, no matter who holds the power in Ottawa, or a provincial capital or a city hall.

Politicians pay scrupulous attention to how large amounts of public cash are spent (thus, the feds throw billions on infrastructure but not a dime on the latest Bombardier bailout). But regardless of political ideology, sooner or later the disconnect settles in at an individual level, ministers start to believe their own PR and before you know it, common sense is in short supply.

That McKenna’s problems are anchored to the use of a photographer simply makes the rest of us sigh even deeper. After all, you’d think every caucus member of this particular government would be able to wield their smart phone camera the way a ninja wields nunchuks.

Maybe, once the news cycle has moved on, Trudeau will quietly convince his caucus that even though their expenses may seem like chump change, the people who actually pay their salary aren’t chumps. And maybe the prime minister’s experience has grown sufficiently to forcefully convey the message that political honeymoons do end, their demise usually hastened by filing boneheaded expenses. Maybe.