Politics is a sad as well as infuriating business. Consider for instance that the authorities have not just been caught allowing a flagrant, on-line-video-atrocity terrorist to come to Canada and become a citizen, they then burbled that we can’t expect them to keep such people out. This version of the Canadian Jedi mind trick seems to deflect the looming menace of actual accountability. But it actually underlines that they are smugly useless… and don’t even know it.
I was reflecting on this issue with respect to another, more minor matter, where the Trudeau administration twiddled its thumbs until a national rail strike started costing us billions a day then blurted out that they were just kidding about letting collective bargaining run its course. And I won’t here get into the wisdom, in principle, of privileging unions so they can hold the rest of us hostage. Or even the hypocrisy of claiming to then once the damage is done flip-flopping, leaving everyone bitter and distrustful.
My point here is simply that in explaining the decision, Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon, whose qualifications for that post are anyone’s guess after a career in PR and political backrooms, proceeded to exude what sounds like deliberately evasive prose until the horrifying realization dawns on you that he’s talked this way so long it’s taken possession of his mind.
As Blacklock’s Reporter recounts, he churned out doublespeak about how the binding arbitration they’d shunned was secretly “in the best interests of millions of unionized workers” because “we found ourselves in exceptional circumstances,” and “made what I believe was the right decision in the best interest of millions of unionized workers in this country and small business owners and industries that drive this country” and “We had to make a decision, and of course a difficult decision.”
You get the idea? It’s soothing, even soporific, partly because it’s so tritely predictable, “an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea” as someone once said of Warren Harding’s deliberate bloviation. But it commits him to nothing except his own excellence.
By the way, his explanation for getting the Labour post was “I was the House leader and they said, ‘Oh, you know what, not much going on in the summer. Then the Prime Minister called and said, “Well, I’d like you to be the Minister of Labour.” And I said, ‘Oh, well, that sounds like a fun job.’” Nothing like seriousness in the face of onerous duties. But I digress.
The point is, once you become sufficiently good at deflecting blame with vacuous verbiage, the overwhelming and disastrous Kruger-Dunning impression you create is of being so irresponsible and inept that you don’t even realize you’re advertising your unfitness.
So now to the infamous case of Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, granted citizenship dismembering an infidel on video for ISIS back in 2015, then being allowed to bring his son in to allegedly help allegedly plot an alleged terror scheme. Surely if ever there was a moment to say “We totally messed up, it’s on us, we can do better and should” it’s now?
Hoo hah. Instead, the National Post reports, our Public Safety Minister, Dominic LeBlanc, or technically “Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs” and equally qualified by past experience for all three by um having been Justin Trudeau’s babysitter, said nobody in authority could have known or done anything. For instance on security screenings that produced a “favourable” recommendation for both Eldidis: “Those decisions were made with the information that (CSIS and CBSA) had available to them at that time.”
As opposed to what? A Ouija board? It’s wind masquerading as substance. And it blows past the key question: why didn’t they have better information? Continuing the flow of panic-inducing reassurances, he said there was “no way” for CSIS or the Canadian Border Services Agency to access the infamous video. But other people did, including journalists.
So the “no way” doesn’t mean it couldn’t be found, just that they weren’t competent to find it. Which struck him not as shocking, even preposterous, but as routine. So to assure us they’re totally on the job, he insists that our fate is in the hands of nincompoops.
It gets worse when they assure that while nothing could have been done, everything is about to be. As in “I think it is reasonable for the government and for Canadians to ask how could this sequence of events… take place and what can we learn from that sequence of events to ensure the very best measures are in place.” Yeah. Like hire someone else, less jelly-like in word and deed.
It’s not just him. After opposition MPs berated the bureaucrats, one telling them “You didn’t do your job”, Liberal attack poodle Mark Gerretsen jumped in to praise the security and border officials for their “incredible work”. Which it was. Just not in a good way. More like Chief Inspector Dreyfuss’s verdict on Inspector Clouseau as “an extraordinary man”.
Speaking of Clouseau, the Post reports that Canadian Border Services Agency “executive vice-president Ted Gallivan said the border agency only found out about the video after it was reported by Global News in the days following the arrests.” Seriously. They found out from the press. But no worries: “It’s part of the review we’re asking ourselves, you know, questions about the procedures.” Now there’s a plan.
Or not. You can also watch online (h/t Sheila Gunn Reid) as a Tory MP tries to get a straight answer from a public servant about when Eldidi first got red-flagged, since he was refused a visitor visa in 2017 before being granted refugee status in 2019 etc. Instead he was told, as to a small child, that they routinely screen people and if something turns up like missing information it could be a concern.
The person seemed unaware that the big issue wasn’t what they’d do if something did turn up, say an Islamist dismemberment video. It’s why they didn’t find it. And when asked directly if the 2017 refusal was on security grounds he pleaded ignorance… meaning he didn’t bother checking before appearing before the committee to help them not assign blame. And what’s really revealing isn’t the evasiveness, it’s the blithe certainty that evasiveness in such a situations is just the ticket.
They literally don’t think it’s a problem if it happens, only if they somehow get tagged with it. Thus another CBSA high-flier, their “vice-president of intelligence and enforcement”, explained that the son was allowed to remain in Canada as a refugee, rather than being sent back to the U.S. under the Safe Third Country Agreement, because he had a family member already in Canada, prompting a Bloc Québécois MP’s incredulous “Even if the family member is a terrorist?” Well you see procedures were followed, answers were given, accountability was foiled.
To ice the cake, or deep-six it, another of these top public servants, with their high salaries, iron job security, and juicy pensions, declared complacently that CSIS only realized the security threat this June (when the French security service actually did its job then tipped them off). But when Tory MP Frank Caputo asked whether there wasn’t “some kind of failure that we didn’t know about his activities beforehand”, she chirped “I would respectfully disagree with the premise that there was a failure in this case.”
Yeah. You would. And listen to why: “As referenced earlier by our minister, there are several lines of defence. Security screening programs are one, and they do begin before people arrive in Canada.” Then they do checks once they’re here. And, she insisted, “the third line of defence, which are national security investigations, in this case was very successful. And I can again assure the committee that as soon as CSIS had that information, we acted, we assessed, and mitigated the threat in conjunction with our security partners.” As for getting it, meh.
When Caputo tried to get her to commit that it was reasonable to be concerned that they cleared all the screenings and only got caught this year, and there might be others, she smiled. “I again can assure the committee that the service takes its security screening responsibilities very seriously, and we take the time and due effort with every file that is referred to the service to make assessments which we provide to our partners, which go to decisions that can be taken based on the information that is available at the time.”
Note the barrage of passive-voice constructions. And the blithe unawareness that they had failed, or that their complacency in the face of it was far more worrying than the initial failure.
Apparently talking and thinking this way is how you get ahead in Ottawa. But if it’s what happens when you take your responsibilities seriously, and this famous time and due effort, you’re just not up to the job in which you remain firmly ensconced. Which isn’t reassuring, it’s terrifying.
