Michael Den Tandt: Trudeau looks hypocritical as Liberals …
Heres whats most notable about the flurry of critical post-mortems on the Trudeau Liberal governments first budget, including this week from the Parliamentary Budget Office itself: Nobody cares.
That is to say, some of us care; taxpayer watchdogs, a few pundits and columnists, opposition politicians and the like, care. But the average Jane and Joe appear not to give a hoot.
Forty-nine per cent, as measured by poll aggregator Eric Grenier, supported the federal Liberals in February, up four points from January. The Rona-Ambrose-led Conservatives retained their perpetual frozen base of 29.5 per cent. Tom Mulcairs New Democrats, for their part, continued to melt in the warm spring drizzle. They clung to 12.5 per cent in February, which according to Grenier may be the NDPs worst single month since 2003.
But heres the thing about those numbers: They cant last. They never do. And the Liberals, with the prime minister himself leading the way, are behaving as though they will.
Just as Tory support was said by some to be immutable, good for a century, back in 2012, so Grit sentiment now has a triumphalist edge. Criticism is routinely waved aside by insiders as biased, unfair or foolish. And the PM himself responds to fair questions with the most outrageous nonsense.
Wednesday, the Ottawa Citizens Kathryn May reported that the PBOs earlier criticism of Budget 2016 for opacity in the numbers was actually more complex than it first appeared.
Jean-Denis Frechettes office was in possession of data, given it by the Finance Department, that would have allowed for a five-year breakdown of the governments taxing and spending plans, rather than the two years provided for in the budget. But the PBO was forbidden to release the data by Finance, on grounds it is confidential, May reported.
Such data was not deemed confidential in the past, either under the Stephen Harper or Paul Martin governments.
We as a party have always demonstrated a level of openness and transparency in how weve conducted our affairs and we will continue to set a very high bar
The fair questions, then, which only a cretin would not think to ask: Why is this information confidential now, when it was not before? And how can this Liberal party, whose leader lashed himself to the mast of transparency long before he became PM, justify a move that appears to limit the PBOs power to publicly dissect government projections, and thus, this independent office of parliaments freedom of action?
The Liberals dined out for years on the previous governments ill-concealed hostility to parliamentary institutions, including the PBO. Accountability, openness, transparency, idealism these are Trudeaus brand qualities. He campaigned for the Liberal leadership on them and won big. He campaigned for the prime ministership on them, making himself a near-perfect political foil to the taciturn, controlling Harper, and won bigger.
How can this same leader, mere months later, not see the glaring contradiction, not to mention political peril, in withholding data that was previously public, from a parliamentary agency whose job it is to hold the government to account on its numbers?
Relatedly, by what mental leap can anyone imagine that Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Rayboulds $500-a-plate Bay Street fundraiser passes the sniff test, with the Ontario Liberals currently on the rack over their practice of selling access for cash? The Ethics Commissioner apparently has signed off on the Justice Ministers event. So? Maybe that means the Ethics Commissioner has become a paper tiger.
In June 2013, not long after Trudeau won his partys leadership in a landslide, he came under personal criticism for a series of paid speeches hed given to charities between 2008 and 2012. The speeches were then standard practice for MPs and senators; legal; and had been approved by the Ethics Commissioner. Nevertheless, it became clear as the storm mounted that public perception mattered more than the Augustinian legalism of Trudeaus initial defences (Lord, make me chaste but not yet!)
In short order, Trudeau offered to repay those speaking fees. The charities responded, predictably, by gazing downward, scuffing their toes in the dirt and declining to be repaid. Controversy gone, point Trudeau. It was an early signal of political skill that, at that time, was still largely not recognized.
It is difficult indeed to reconcile the deft defusing of that mini-scandal, then, to the PMs clumsy response to this brewing controversy, now.
We as a party have always demonstrated a level of openness and transparency in how weve conducted our affairs and we will continue to set a very high bar on our expectations of how Canadians need to be able to see that politicians are accountable, Trudeau told reporters Wednesday in Montreal.
Sorry, Prime Minister, but no. You cant say these words when youre not doing those things. The good move would be to climb down, release the sought-after data, cancel the Justice Ministers fundraiser, lick your wounds, and move forward to the next days news.
Unless its already circle-the-wagons time, not half a year into the mandate.
Twitter.com/mdentandt
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Michael Den Tandt: Trudeau looks hypocritical as Liberals ...