Roundup: A few more partial concessions

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I’m about at the end of my patience with stories about moving expenses, just as news comes down that two more senior ministerial staffers have offered to partially reimburse their own expenses. This while we continue the smarmy remarks by the Conservatives who can’t decide if the perpetrators are cronies or millionaire BFFs, and the NDP perch on their sanctimony, and pundits across the nation clutch their pearls about how it doesn’t actually matter that all of these expenses were within the rules, that it’s all a matter of perception (which they incidentally are fuelling by the way in which these stories and columns are framed). Indeed, we have moralising columns mentioning entitlement, corruption, and how this puts things back on a “war footing.”

About the only salient bit of analysis that has been Robyn Urback’s (otherwise sarcastic) look at the Liberal damage control strategy pattern, which tends to be “ignore, defend, project, concede partial defeat.” And we did see elements of all of these, including the final two simultaneously as they not only had the partial concession of the repayments, but also the projection of looking at similar expenses within the Harper PMO, which they obviously spent Thursday night digging up from PCO records. And let’s be honest – as her first test, Bardish Chagger didn’t do much to help her cause when she would try to deflect with protestations that they were trying to help the middle class or building a strong team. (I will add that it may have been unfair for We The Media to castigate Trudeau for not giving the names of who the staffers were, given privacy considerations).

There was plenty of evidence or fact that Chagger could have used, from being more specific in pointing out the policies, or contextualising them as being a reflection of policies collectively negotiated with senior public servants (where changing policies could affect them), and most especially when the Conservatives were making cheap shots about the “personalised cash payments,” noting what those referred to precisely, which is not a payment in a brown envelope.

But no, we didn’t get that, and instead of having a discussion based on fact, we got pabulum, and it feeds into this ugly and petty narrative that We The Media love to perpetuate, where we must reflect a nation that is so cheap that we must be mean-spirited about it (and I deeply suspect is part of our collective tendency toward tall poppy syndrome). I defy you find a single person who wouldn’t claim moving expenses that they were legitimately entitled to. But instead, I’m getting people barking at me over the Twitter Machine that these staffers should be volunteers, and that it’s some kind of awful crime that they get reasonably well compensated for doing a damned difficult job that most people wouldn’t want to go anywhere near. This is the kind of nonsense that we shouldn’t be feeding, and yet we can’t help ourselves because cheap outrage is such a quick and easy high, but like most highs, it leaves us empty and worse off in the long run.

Good reads:

  • Stéphane Dion insists they’re not negotiating an extradition treaty with China, which is why all week they’ve been saying “high-level security dialogue.”
  • Kirsty Duncan says that says they’re rebuilding government science capacity, after figures showed the NRC lost a quarter fo their scientists.
  • In case you needed something else to keep you up at night, the head of CSE says that quantum computing could soon make current encryption useless.
  • Four federal departments, including Global Affairs, broke the rules by hiring unpaid interns.
  • Maclean’s has a longread about Kellie Leitch and the culture war she touched off (which she adamantly insists isn’t about Muslims – really!)
  • Chris Selley looks at why proportional representation may be the only hope for influence for social conservatives.
  • Scott Reid notes to Peter MacKay and Nathan Cullen that sometimes in politics, there is no “next time” for a leadership run.
  • Susan Delacourt notes Trudeau’s substance-free responses to the media this week, and the appetite of the voting public for people who “tell it like it is.”
  • Andrew Coyne castigates the Conservatives for their opposition to carbon pricing, when they are supposed to be the party of free markets.
  • Kady O’Malley praises Order Paper Questions, and offers suggestions on how to make them even better.
  • James Bowden has a quirky connection between British Parliamentary procedure and Star Wars when it comes to Order 66.

Odds and ends:

Senator Janis Johnson, the longest-serving Conservative in the chamber, retires on Tuesday.

As part of their tour in the Yukon, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will distribute children’s books written in the threatened language of Southern Tutchone.

One thought on “Roundup: A few more partial concessions”

  1. Personally, I’ve been ignoring the opposition and any of their antics. As far as the media goes… I’ve got cable and I can watch all kinds of neat stuff. I don’t need Rona or any of the sanctimonious NDP polluting my screen.

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