Trudeau should have rented a rowboat
I’m puzzled. There were lineups to see Prime Minister Trudeau in smaller cities as he began his cross-country tour, with venues changing to accommodate big crowds.
People in London, Peterborough, Kingston, Dartmouth, Fredericton, Sherbrooke, etc. had questions about carbon taxes, tax fairness, pharmacare, electoral reform, clean water for First Nations, transgender prisoners, Hydro prices, public service payroll delays, electoral reform, veterans’ pensions and many other matters, including some he has no say over.
Meanwhile, excited Ottawa journalists were clutching a pearl, a big cultured thing the size of a ham that they expect will arouse the envy of simple folk. The pearl is Trudeau’s Christmas vacation with family and four friends on the Aga Khan’s private island in the Bahamas. This elitist trip will be the end of him, they say, channelling anti-elitist Khristinn “I do have 22 letters after my name, I’m not an idiot” Kellie Leitch.
They think Canadians don’t take Caribbean vacations. Except they do. Even I have, and I detest sand. Oh the boredom of lying on those wretched lounger things and baking like a potato.
The problem is that Trudeau took his winter break with the Aga Khan, who was an honorary pallbearer at his father’s funeral, knew Justin as a toddler and is a rich Muslim. In 2009 Stephen Harper made the Aga Khan an honorary citizen of Canada, and in 2014 co-opened with him the extraordinarily beautiful Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.
Trudeau flew to Nassau on a Challenger jet but with no public flights to the island and no bridge, he accepted a helicopter ride. After days of bored MPs having the vapours, the ethics commissioner is now studying this.
I know what Trudeau should have done: rented a boat and rowed there. He can paddle, we’ve seen him. MP friend Seamus O’Regan went to Cambridge and surely knows how to scull.
Four hale friends plus Sophie and the children and you’ve got yourself a modern Three Men in a Boat, the 1889 bro novel by Jerome K. Jerome that remains as fresh and funny as when it was first published.
It’s about Jerome, Harris and George, and Montmorency the dog, deciding they’re suffering from overwork — they are not — and going boating on the Thames.
(Bros overpack. Bros are object of public mirth in cab rank, at train station, on river, on bank. Bros bring canned goods for lunch but not can opener. Fit of temper. Bros discover advantages of cheese. George buys banjo. Harris falls in. Bros get lost on river, can go neither forward nor back. Tent collapses. Harris burns scrambled eggs, Montmorency’s nose. Jerome peels potatoes, Harris instructs, resentment ensues. Harris attacked by swans. George tries to punt, left clinging to stick, stick sinks. There are four islands. Bros get the wrong one.)
Imagine this with the Trudeau family party. Children unimpressed, Sophie distinctly icy. Worried Aga Khan sends out rescue team. Trudeau rowboat towed in by competent staff. Lifelong friendships shattered. (Kate Purchase, badly sunburned, not speaking to husband Tom, Seamus glaring at Justin, does not know what Sophie sees in him, Seamus’ husband Steve does not know what he sees in Seamus. Gift for Aga Khan — crate of artisanal beer — was drunk on trip. Tom found eating secret biscuits. Steve has sea lice embedded in foot.)
Aga Khan is peacemaker, extracts lice, applies unguent, recommends reading, rest and prayer. Perhaps the ethics commissioner will limit the PM’s friends to a wealth cap of no more than 12 times Trudeau’s salary. No, six. He cannot visit mansions — too fancy for you, young man — but townhouses are OK. Well, he can’t stay at our house. I recall having a dozen eight-year-olds for yearly birthday party sleepovers, rivers of laughter from the basement and a night of squealing.
But little girls get along. I’m not bringing down breakfast and having Trudeau principal secretary Gerald Butts complain that he doesn’t like blueberries touching his pancakes. Rob Silver knows this. He put them there. Rob smirks.
In Davos this week, cabinet ministers will have to bunk in one open-plan ski chalet. Same debacle as rowboat. (After lights out, Chrystia Freeland reads with flashlight under the covers, François-Philippe Champagne’s long johns are hi-vis, Navdeep Bains gently puts sleeping Scott Brison’s hand in bowl of warm water, and Bill Morneau sleepwalks. Screaming fight erupts at 2 a.m. Things are said.)
The easy way out is to do what Harper did, not have any rich famous friends, or indeed any friends at all. Food for thought: prime minister as social isolate. It worked before, or didn’t.
The easy way out is to do what Harper did, not have any rich famous friends, or indeed any friends at all