WINDSOR, Ont. — As Kim Campbell, the former short-lived Conservative PM, once famously said, “An election is no time to discuss serious issues”.
This was actually a précis of her slightly longer answer to the late Peter Gzowski, who had asked for details on her plan to reform Canada’s welfare programs and Campbell curtly replied, “This is not the time, I don’t think, to get involved in a debate on very, very serious issues”.
She was prescient, if galling.
Indeed, as Toronto Liberal MP Adam Vaughan remarked at a Justin Trudeau rally Sunday in Markham, there is no real national campaign any more, rather small local or regional ones.
And the few biggish ideas – the various parties’ child-care or climate change policies, for instance – are not as such debated, but rather presented as quid pro quos: You give me your vote, I with your own money, will return X dollars to your pocket. It all has the greasy transactional feel that is so very Ottawa.
Neither is former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama’s motto — “When they go low, we go high”— anywhere in evidence in this 40-day campaign.
In Canada, it translates to, “If they go low, we go lower.”
Just Monday, from B.C., Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said he was looking forward to hearing from Trudeau about allegations that he once took Faith Goldy out for drinks.
Now in fairness, it’s the Liberals who made any association with Goldy toxic, this by tweeting out that 2013 video she had made with Conservative candidate Justina McCaffrey to promote a wacky reality TV show idea they had. Similarly another dated video making the rounds Monday showed Goldy, then working for the now-defunct Sun News Network, walking with Trudeau.
All this was before Goldy became infamous for her racist views.
And Scheer on Monday was answering a question about Conservative candidates when he raised the drinks issue.
Still, it was an astonishing thing for a leader to suggest — as a Liberal handler said with disdain, that’s the sort of thing you have underlings (Maryam Monsef and Melanie Joly take a bow) tweet out – particularly if you’re not sure if the thing is true.
The Liberal war room immediately responded that Trudeau had never had drinks with Goldy, but that if Trudeau were to speak to her “he’d tell her to stop saying racist and hurtful things.” Gotcha. No, double gotcha.
All that does raise the uncomfortable question of what are elections for, then?
Luckily, I am able to tell you, at least from the Liberal perspective, because I’ve been with the Trudeau campaign for almost a week.
Elections are for promises, some of which may never be kept, and all of which taxpayers/voters will pay for. There is no government money, only that which government sucks from us.
Elections are for photogenic appearances at public schools.
Trudeau had two of those Monday in southwestern Ontario.
A former teacher himself, he was in his milieu: An obedient captive audience of six- and-seven year olds and a super-cute background – “street” signs for halls (Awesome Avenue, Caring Boulevard, Kindness Cove, Cooperation Corner, etc.)
It was at Sandowne Public School in Waterloo that he met with a Grade 5 class and stood with them through the singing of O Canada, land acknowledgements and a “mindfulness minute” of deep (ish) thought.
At Blessed Sacrament in London, Ont., he sat down with a small mixed class of Grade 1s and 2s to read them a book called Why I Love Canada.
(No doubt because of that bastard Doug Ford, the class size is an outrageous 19.)
Trudeau was of course great with the kids, who knew him as “the boss of Canada”, and the kids were outstanding, as kids are, if already also well inculcated in soft, small-l liberal ideology.
Somewhere that morning, he had a media availability, where he revealed he has a tell.
When he’s dodging a question and wants to make it clear that this particular subject is either closed or somehow unworthy, he wrinkles his pretty nose a bit and offers a chilly and remarkably obvious false smile.
Not that he takes all that many questions, mind.
He took Saturday and Sunday off from media scrums entirely, and when on Monday he was called on his lack of accessibility by David Cochrane of the CBC, his answer provided a fine illustration of evasive manoeuvres and sucking and blowing, all at once.
Cochrane set the stage.
For the first five days of the campaign, he pointed out, Trudeau took no questions on two, and yet while he often invokes the spectre of former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Harper took questions every day during his last campaign.
“Will you commit to a daily question-and-answer for the rest of this campaign?” Cochrane asked.
“I’m happy to be taking questions today,” the Liberal leader said. “I’m happy to be getting out across the country to talk with Canadians about the very important choices you’ve highlighted we need to make as a country. Will we continue to go forward or will we go back to the Harper years?
“I’m for moving forward and that’s why I’m so glad to be answering questions today and will be continuing to take questions from media, who I respect deeply, throughout this campaign.”
Cochrane followed up: “So moving forward, will we do this daily?”
And Trudeau, his great regard for the press notwithstanding, replied, “I’m looking forward to taking questions from you on a regular basis.” Then came the tell, the nose wrinkling and palpably phoney smile promptly summonsed.
And that’s why there are elections, so we can all move forward, with the children.
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