Roundup: Ill-equipped to combat weaponised cynicism

Posted on by

I’ve been thinking about something Trudeau said during the “debate” on Thursday night about cynicism being the enemy of progressive politics, and in this piece by Aaron Wherry, he listed some of the attacks made against Trudeau in his discussion of said cynicism. It has not gone unnoticed that this has been a tactic that Jagmeet Singh has been cultivating for years – undermining any progress the government has made on tough files, and pretending that difficult things could be accomplished with just a little more willpower, or that things under provincial jurisdiction could just be done with more applications of that willpower. The truth is that it can’t be, and that hard things are hard – which is also why the “you had six years!” talking point is hard to take too seriously. It has a built-in assumption that a government has infinite capacity to do the work, that the House of Commons has infinite time on its calendar to pass all of its legislation, and it also assumes that premiers will sign onto anything the federal government waves in front of them. But that’s not how real life works (especially when your capacity is being sapped by needing to deal with Donald Trump for four years).

But complexity and nuance don’t belong in debates, which is what Singh, Annamie Paul, and even to an extent Erin O’Toole are counting on when they list Trudeau’s so-called “failures.” He didn’t meet the 2020 climate target? If he had started in the fall of 2015, moving to meet that target was pretty much impossible without cratering the economy, and Singh knows it. You can’t lower emissions on a dime, and even bending the curve – which Trudeau has done – takes enormous work, and it’s work he had to go to the Supreme Court of Canada to defend. Boil water advisories? There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and each community has a unique issue that requires a unique solution, which each community is taking the lead on, and the federal government pays the invoices. But again, these solutions take time, even with money being thrown at the problem, which Singh and others seem incapable of recognizing because it suits their narrative. “Taking Indigenous kids to court?” Again, it’s a more nuanced issue where the government has agreed to pay the compensation, and is in the process of negotiating how much in concert with two other class action lawsuits (which went directly to settlement – the government didn’t contest them at all) – but there are very real legal issues with the precedent that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal might set, because their award appears to contravene a previous Supreme Court of Canada decision. Again, Singh should know this because he’s a lawyer, but he has no interest in the truth because it allows him to score points (and frankly, the media has utterly dropped the ball on this file because they only talk to one party in the litigation and don’t find out just what “jurisdiction” issue the minister refers to). These are all things whose narratives have been torqued to drive a sense of cynicism in Trudeau’s government, which Trudeau is frankly ill-prepared to dispute because he keeps sticking to happy-clappy talking points rather than being frank about problems and solutions. When someone offers you platitudes and doesn’t explain their homework, it makes it all too easy to let cynicism fill in the cracks, and Trudeau really has only himself to blame here.

Meanwhile, here is the video the five leaders released encouraging people to get vaccinated.

On the campaign trail:

  • Justin Trudeau was in Hamilton to essentially give all of the rebuttals he couldn’t during the debate, and said he doesn’t regret calling the election when he did.
  • Trudeau also met with the Star’s editorial board, where he cast aspersions on O’Toole’s supposed progressive credentials.
  • Trudeau also said that he intends to keep flags on federal buildings at half-mast until Indigenous leaders say it’s appropriate to raise them again.
  • Erin O’Toole was in Whitby and the GTA to recite his five key pledges.
  • Jagmeet Singh held a pep rally in Ottawa before heading to Vancouver.
  • As expected, Quebec was up in arms about Shachi Kurl’s question on Bill 21 posed in an inflammatory manner, with other leaders denouncing it.
  • Surprising nobody, the debate commission is under fire for the tire fire format.
  • Here is some context for things that the leaders said about their families during Thursday’s debate.
  • The Conservative candidate in Beaches–East York has been dumped after Islamophobic tweets surfaced (which she denies writing).
  • Jennifer Winter examines the Liberal climate plan and sees places where implementation plans remain vague, which doesn’t inspire confidence.

Good reads:

  • NACI is recommending that the immunocompromised receive a third dose of a COVID vaccine to better ensure protection.
  • Maclean’s has an interview with Jody Wilson-Raybould reflecting on her time in politics, and while somewhat self-unaware in places, it’s a good read.
  • Former MP Shelly Glover is now officially in the Manitoba Progressive Conservative leadership to replace Brian Pallister.
  • Robert Hiltz rips into the utter farce that were the debates, where the format completely frustrated any attempt at substance.
  • My weekend column points to the mounting number of analyses of the platform costing and environmental plans, and how only the Liberals are coming out ahead.

Odds and ends:

For Xtra, I took five takeaways from the trash fire of an English debate.

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.

3 thoughts on “Roundup: Ill-equipped to combat weaponised cynicism”

  1. Two things to add to the discussion:
    First, I read a tweet yesterday that “Why did Trudeau call the election?” has become the Canadian media version of “But her emails” and oh, isn’t this true — the obsession over this topic, constant references to optics and how upset we supposedly all are, feigned incredulity that Trudeau couldn’t wave a magic wand to make Parliament and especially the committees into functional entities – it all reminds me of how irrelevant the US media focus was in 2016.
    Second, maybe this is all just political play-acting, but I am getting the impression that Singh is going further down the rabbit hole every day in his intense personal dislike for Trudeau – I don’t know if it is jealousy or a personal slight or just a personality clash. But it seems to me Singh would cut off his nose to spite his face rather than enter into any kind of cooperative agreement with the Liberals during the next parliament.

    • Simultaneously, Singh claims credit for every helpful thing the government did for Canadians during the pandemic.

Comments are closed.