New MPs arrive in town with high expectations and intentions to create change that will help make Canada a better place for their constituents. I don’t mean to include most backbenchers among the cynics who specialize in weaponizing issues. The unicorn is David Johnston, who has to be the only member of that rare species, the former governor general, to be hired by the prime minister of the day to provide cover from opposition attacks, to fail in that mission, to be fired for his efforts by a majority vote in House of Commons, to refuse to accept his dismissal and to press stoically on, turning up more useful evidence of serious flaws in the security system than all the CSIS leakers and opposition leaders combined. The towering intellects who direct strategy on the opposition side determined that the surest way to nail the prime minister’s hide to the doorstep with the CSIS leaks would be by slaying the unicorn. The issue took a turn to the bizarre last week when the opposition parties tried a novel approach to personalize the issue and to place responsibility for all errors of omission and commission in the security arena squarely on Justin Trudeau’s doorstep. That CSIS has failed to identify and prosecute the perpetrators speaks volumes about its internal ills. It’s the issue - or faux issue - that is still gripping Parliament Hill nearly four months after the deliberate disclosure of classified CSIS reports on foreign interference by enemies of the Liberal government who were working, and still are, within the ranks of the security agency. Nowhere in any of the opinion surveys that visited my inbox did I find mention of the government’s management of national security.
Jobs, wages that don’t keep pace with inflation, food prices, rents and mortgage rates, along with such concerns as safe streets, schools and transit systems, under-resourced health care, and a clean environment for today and for future generations. Last week, with COVID dropping off the chart of public worries, most people, according to the polls, were preoccupied with pocketbook issues. The distance between the governors and the governed has never seemed greater. In Ottawa, the town where dreams go to die, cynicism is the helium that fills the political balloon as it floats away, far beyond the ken and concerns of ordinary people.
0 kommentar(er)
