Once again, the brave political culture of Ottawa manifests itself with another column featuring anonymous MPs complaining to credulous columnists about how terrible their lives are, this time courtesy of John Ivison, who transcribes the miseries of Liberal MPs who aren’t running again about how everything is centralized in the PMO, that they’re being placated with busywork in committees, and the humiliation of being forced to memorize softball scripts to read in QP. And it’s all just so tiresome, because the vast majority of this is just learned helplessness.

I have increasingly less patience for this kind of anonymous whinging from MPs because they have all the power to change their situation if they wanted to do anything about it, but they instead learn to simply accept their situation even though they can change it. They don’t have to take the orders from the PMO if they think it’s humiliating or degrading. They don’t have to ask the questions prepared for them by PMO for QP – they can ask their own. The key is that they need their fellow backbenchers to back them up, and behave similarly. If you think the prime minister is going to throw a tantrum and threaten to not sign the nominations of his whole backbench, well, you’d be mistaken. They have this power. But instead they whinge to columnists about how unfair their lot in life is, never mind that they made this bed, and if they really wanted to change things, they would take back their power and stop electing leaders in quasi-presidential primaries that only serves to give them a false sense of “democratic legitimacy” at the expense of MPs. Again, they have the power to change this if they really wanted to.

As for these columnists, I would add that they need to get over this jejune notion that just letting MPs do more private members’ business will solve things. It won’t. In fact, it will probably just make things worse, because it will just bottleneck in the Senate, and MPs will spend more of their time working on these hobby horses rather than doing their actual work of holding government to account. That’s not how Parliament is supposed to work.

Good reads:

• Chrystia Freeland is again reminding Canadians to heed travel warnings, because they’re there for a reason.
• Catherine McKenna pointed out the new Canada Food Guide recommends more plant-based proteins, as the UN warns about agriculture affecting climate change.
• The federal government made changes to how patented drug prices are regulated to bring down some of the most expensive ones, in spite of industry “fearmongering.”
• Maclean’s talks to Maryam Monsef about what the federal government is doing to combat violence against women.
• The government is entering into a new round of engagement with First Nations communities on Trans Mountain, this time looking for those looking to get involved.
• Another BC First Nation community found the benefit agreement regarding an LNG pipeline had a clause asking the Chief to discourage hinderances of the project.
• The case of the public servant who was also accused of leaking the same material as Mark Norman is heading to a preliminary inquiry.
• The Liberals have nominated Vancouver tech entrepreneur Taleeb Noormohamed to run against Jody Wilson-Raybould.
• Andrew Scheer is campaigning in Cape Breton, which has voted Liberal for decades, hoping to make a breakthrough there in the election.
• Scheer also says he won’t implement his private school tax credit plan, citing the size of the deficit (which is not a big issue).
• Kevin Carmichael looks at the latest economic data, and explains why Quebec’s economy is doing so well.
• Colby Cosh tracks the use of the strange slogan of “You’re not my president/prime minister/premier” and what they’re trying to say (which is, of course, nonsense).
• My weekend column looks at the recent issue with lieutenant governors dying in office, and calls for the restoration of the vice-regal appointments committee.

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