I suppose it's terribly cliché to write a column about just how awful things are in politics, but dear reader, I am reaching the end of my patience, and trust me when I say that as someone who has sat through virtually every question period for almost ten years, I have a high threshold. And yet here we are.
Vague statements and obfuscation are nothing new in politics. It's how we've conditioned politicians to start speaking because it's safer than saying something they might regret. Ask a direct question? Get a lengthy response on how the government's plans are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you do get a direct answer, and you can file your story with a small sense of vindication. At the height of scandal, direct questions have been met with all manner of non sequitur, fog, and obfuscation. Recall Paul Calandra and the homilies of his parents' pizza shop, or lessons he was trying to impart to his daughters. It's frustrating stuff, but you kept at it in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, the veneer would crack.
But political communications evolve, as with anything, and in my own particular declinist pessimism, it's rarely for the better. We went from a system where MPs would debate legislation to reading speeches into the record because the rule changes we made to "encourage" debate did the opposite it created defined spaces of time to be filled with words. Question Period went from actual back-and-forth debates to creating a buffet of media clips for the evening news, to content creation for social media campaigns. And now it is sinking yet again.
At some point, the Liberals decided that all of their responses needed to include slogans, which would eat up time, and reinforce their messaging. Sometimes you could angle a relevant talking point in there, but it seemed to be increasingly unnecessary. Their first few months didn't seem to have this obsession with sticking to message we had ministers who were being entrusted to answer on behalf of their departments in a forthright manner, and I have vague recollections that they actually did so. But as time went on, the tighter message control started to come in, and so came in the notion that the response to any question would be to load it up with pabulum. When you had a crisis? Pabulum. Accusations levelled at the minister? Pabulum. Whether the instinct was to not answer with anger, or to try to find a better method of deflection, the default response to virtually any issue is now pabulum. Eventually, a real answer might develop, but better be safe in the meantime and stick to the pabulum.
And eventually, the Conservatives clued into this, and realized that they could start lobbing any accusation out there, and the government wouldn't refute it they would simply deliver another spoonful of pabulum. And the accusations got wilder, and the anchor to reality ever more tenuous. Those personal corporation tax changes that were specifically geared toward those highest income earners using corporations as tax shelters? That was an attack on "local business" and going after mom and pop shops, roofers, and farmers. Sure, there were some verifiable flaws with the proposals, but we never heard them from the opposition only the caricature. Meanwhile, did Bill Morneau properly refute this? It was a steady stream of pabulum until weeks later, by which point the narrative had become about how he was protecting family fortunes by going after the little guy (never mind that it literally was not).
Knowing that they could get away with it, the Conservatives made this their play. You can't even call it truthiness because that implies that they believe something to be true in spite the facts. No, this is pure cynicism. It's treating the viewing public like idiots because they know that the government won't call them on it, and the media is gun shy about calling it out as it happens because they don't want to come off as biased in favour of the government. Yes, you'll get a Baloney Meter reading from the Canadian Press in a couple of days, but by then, they've repeated the narrative eleventy times over social media, asked the question in the House disingenuously, framed the issue in the most mendacious way possible, and the government refuses to call them on it. They just offer more pabulum, and maybe by day two or three, they'll push back a little bit, but the gloves won't come off. And this is a problem not only for the government, but for the viewing public because any semblance of truth is out the window.
And now the Conservatives are using this loose relationship with the truth with complete impunity. The India trip has been derided as a complete disaster that has caused irreparable harm with our diplomatic relationship with India which is a complete fabrication. An even bigger fabrication was the notion that the increased tariffs on chickpeas was a direct result of the trip, never mind that they actually hit Australia harder than Canada (who exports very few of those particular pulses to India), or the fact that the tariffs have to do with domestic Indian politics and the fact that there is a global supply glut. The economic relationship with India post-visit is status quo. The truth of the matter is that in the grand scheme of things, Canada is virtually irrelevant in India's considerations but you'll never hear the government call this out. Instead we get some pabulum about how valuable our relationship with India is.
The Conservatives have also made a big deal in the last week about carbon pricing and demanding to know exactly how many tonnes of GHGs will be reduced by a $50/tonne carbon price. Apparently, carbon pricing is like an SO2 scubber on a smokestack, as opposed to a market signal that internalizes the costs of emissions and incentivizes companies innovate in order to reduce those costs and encourages consumers to make better choices. But because Catherine McKenna couldn't actually say that, and instead just talked around the issue with pabulum about how the environment and the economy go together, the narrative has become that this is just a tax grab, and that she refuses to answer a simple question. Because the government refuses to refute it.
Whether this particular government strategy is supposed to be about always presenting positive messages, or to not be seen to be defensive, it means that there is nobody standing up for truth, or context at the very least. It's completely debasing politics, and we're letting them get away with it. How is that any way to run a country?
