Week 39.
Pardon. Unlike the US where, apparently, some people can pre-emptively pardon themselves, here in Canada you have to beg others for it.
So Elder Advice begs your pardon. Because I said I would eschew political and COVID commentary and chew on more timeless human concerns for a time. But that was before the Prime Minister’s Office issued a press release of a conversation between Justin and Erin. A press release detailing how, on the call, the PM had sternly criticized the Conservative Party for promoting misinformation about COVID-19. None of which would cause me to do anything - except perhaps stifle a yawn – if the conversation had actually taken place before the statement was released.
It hadn’t.
As Jeffrey Toobin said when he heard: “Now, that’s embarrassing.”
Let me start by saying what I am not saying: that this incident somehow demonstrates the general incompetence of the PMO or the superiority of the Conservatives. Everyone makes mistakes, and I can readily envisage the Tories doing the same thing. Nor am I saying this is one more example of why Liberals, who constantly claim the high moral ground, should be ashamed of themselves. Even the delicious irony of Justin complaining about misinformation disseminated by others is not my point.
Although it is worth pointing out.
What I am saying is that this episode is a perfect illustration of the sorry state of our politics. Where there are no principles. Where everything is contrived and scripted, staged and spun. Where outrage is now not only manufactured; it is pre-packaged. Where even the phone calls are … phoney.
Perhaps I have been naïve but I used to think there were limits. And principles. Principles - people used to have them, a forever ago.
So here is a suggestion for those in Cabinet. If you must contrive and script and stage and spin everything before you actually do anything, why not announce the following:
The federal government has met its climate change targets under the Paris Agreement.
Kovrig and Spavor are home. Ottawa unveils a principled approach to relations with China.
The federal government has ended the grotesque national embarrassment of indigenous communities without access to clean drinking water.
Canada has merged its regulatory approval processes for COVID-19 vaccines with the EU, UK, US and other sophisticated countries so no more time is wasted by bureaucracies in getting Canadians inoculated.
The federal government has brokered an interprovincial free trade deal so Canadian goods and services move as freely inside the country as they do to the US, Mexico and Europe.
Ottawa has come clean with Canadians, with a fiscal update which includes transparent disclosure on how the country will manage and pay the 2020 COVID debt of $850 billion.
The federal government has protected the health of Canadian citizens in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
The federal government has ignored all screaming grievance collectors, treated Western Canada fairly, ceased pandering to Quebec and governed transparently, ethically and sensibly.
And then actually do those things.
Otherwise, it is December now and Christmas is only three weeks away. Given how grisly 2020 has been, and how the lockdown in Ontario promises to make the 1943 standard “I’ll be Home for Christmas” depressingly prescient, I thought perhaps we should cancel it.
And then I remembered the last time that was done. It was 1645, when Oliver Cromwell and his colleagues - who were not just puritanical, but actually Puritans - took over England. Christmas then was not the family holiday it is now but an orgy of seasonal misconduct offensive to the God-fearing. Which is unsurprising given life in 1645 was otherwise grim. COVID-19 and the minor privations we have suffered in 2020 pale in comparison. Most people lived in tiny villages full of filth, worked endlessly, starved regularly, married others with scoliosis, scurvy and syphilis, and waited for winter to come each year and kill off the children who hadn’t died in childbirth. Passing away from the Great Plague of 1645 would likely have been a welcome relief.
That cheered me up considerably.
So, despite my momentary lapse, I am looking forward to the holiday. To the Christmas turkey. To the former Bishop of Turkey coming down my chimney. And to hearing more about Drs. Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, the German offspring of Turkish immigrants who created the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. They, and innumerable scientists like them, deserve thanks this Christmas. For toiling away in obscurity. For quietly ensuring the rest of us will live. So that, in the happy years to come, we will still be around to complain bitterly about all the things everyone else is doing wrong.