Roundup: The Sophie Grégoire Trudeau problem

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The issue of assistants for Sophie Grégoire Trudeau has become a bit ugly in social media, and overblown in the political arena while opposition parties on both sides of the spectrum try to cast the prime minister’s family as being these out-of-touch elites (some of it completely speciously, as the Conservatives try to equate Trudeau’s statement about not needing government funds for childcare and suddenly billing for nannies was hypocritical, despite the fact that he wasn’t the leader of a G7 nation before), because if there’s nothing that this country loves, it’s cheap outrage. And really, that’s what a lot of this is, combined with some garden variety sexist expectations that she should be a doting wife and mother in the home, taking care of meals and childcare on her own without any public profile. But before we delve into it further, a couple of important reminders.

Seriously, for the love of all the gods on Olympus, stop calling her the First Lady. We don’t have a First Lady in Canada because we have a royal family, and the closest equivalent – aside from Prince Philip as the Royal Consort – is the somewhat antiquated term of the Chatelaine of Rideau Hall.

No, this is completely wrong. We don’t elect governments or parties in this country. We elect 338 MPs, who come together in a parliament that forms a government. So in essence, we did elect the family that came along with the MP who was able to form a government.

And this really is the important point. We have a constitutional monarchy so that the royal family takes on the ceremonial and celebrity functions and prevents the Head of Government from becoming a cult of personality. Unfortunately, in this age of media and social media, where the Trudeaus are consider bona fide celebrities in their own right, it has created a kind of cult of personality (which is only worsened by the fact that the fact that Trudeau was elected by a nebulous “supporter class” means he is accountable to nobody and he knows it). So when the public comes looking for Grégoire Trudeau to do speaking engagements and to do the kind of celebrity outreach that members of the royal family do so well in the UK (but certainly less so here because of their relative absence), how are we supposed to react? What expectations do we put on her as the spouse of the Head of Government, who has no defined role? While I have no objections to the nannies or single assistant (Trudeau is prime minister of a G7 country, and demanding that his spouse do all of the domestic work is frankly odious, particularly given her diplomatic expectations), I find myself torn about the need for additional help. I have no doubt that she needs it, because she has chosen to parlay her celebrity toward charitable causes. And it’s less about the taxpayer’s money that rubs me the wrong way, but the fact that this is getting uncomfortable under our system of government and constitutional traditions. That we have a prime minister who has formed a kind of cult of personality is very uncomfortable, but it’s not a problem with an easy solution, short of insisting that members of the royal family start spending more time on our shores to do the work of the celebrity face of our constitutional order. Is the solution to have the party pay for her added assistants? Maybe. Or to charge speaking fees on a cost-recovery basis? One can imagine the howls out outrage that an “elite” is charging charities money already. There’s not an easy answer, but the discomfort around the larger problem of where our system is headed is something that we should be talking about. Unfortunately, that conversation is being drowned out by cheap outrage and the June and Ward Cleaver crowd, which is only making this whole exercise reek.

Good reads:

  • The Liberals have promised to clean up government advertising, and to have Advertising Standards Canada vet ads for partisanship. Trudeau appearing in a Destination Canada social media video is apparently okay under those rules, however.
  • NDP MP Kennedy Stewart defended his bill on getting more women into politics, by proceeding to slag a female Conservative MP. The democratic reform minister has also said that she’s not interested in supporting said bill.
  • Destination Canada paid a secret sum of money to Bell in a sole-sourced contract designed to help smaller travel companies market to millennials. No, seriously.
  • It was the annual March for Life in Ottawa yesterday, and Conservative MP Arnold Viersen – he who wants to regulate Internet porn – called the “Government of Death.” So there’s that.
  • Shannon Proudfoot recounts the Paul Martin portrait unveiling as a kind of class reunion.
  • Apparently Stephen Harper had a plan to “unite the right” in Alberta by creating a provincial wing of the Conservative party there.
  • Ontario NDP deputy leader Jagmeet Singh is apparently contemplating a federal leadership run. It might help with the “whitest party” image.
  • Colby Cosh calls out some of the NDP’s current woes and isn’t sure that they have someone in their ranks who can solve them.
  • Chantal Hébert suspects the Liberals may be setting up the electoral reform process to fail.

Odds and ends:

Paul Godfrey wants the government to subsidize newspapers, but doesn’t want to describe it as such.

While in Montreal, Bill Morneau gave an awkward anecdote about how he dated the daughter of a prominent provincial political figure.

2 thoughts on “Roundup: The Sophie Grégoire Trudeau problem”

  1. Ummm, you mean “anecdote” rather than “antidote” surely! Autospell gremlins, perhaps?

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