One of the most irritating aspects of Justin Trudeau’s long reign of error was his evident joy in making announcements about this or that topic. It got to the point that even the pro-Liberal media started to notice that the same policy would be announced several times over a few months but no actual progress was made (except where they could start setting up a new government program … they’d hire the staff very quickly, but little or nothing would get done beyond that). Mark Carney was supposed to be a clean break from the Trudeau years — even though most of his ministers were Trudeau retreads — but Carney may actually be worse than Trudeau in that he just loves photo ops with pretty props for the cameras. As Dr. Sylvain Charlebois notes, we need a lot fewer photogenic Potemkin Villages in how our federal government operates:
In recent weeks, we have witnessed politicians lean on powerful visuals to make their case on food and trade. But these staged moments rarely serve the public interest. Worse, they often deepen food illiteracy in a country where understanding how our system works is already fragile.
Take Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s stunt. Upset with Diageo’s decision to close its bottling plant in Ontario, he theatrically dumped a bottle of Crown Royal and urged Ontarians to boycott the brand. What he didn’t mention is that the bottle in question was made in Manitoba and bottled in Quebec by unionized Canadian workers — jobs unaffected by the Ontario closure. The Windsor facility mainly serviced the U.S. market, and Diageo’s decision was years in the making. Ironically, the boycott risks punishing Canadian workers who will continue producing Crown Royal for Canadians. And for future investors, the message is chilling: why put capital into Ontario if a government will trash your brand on television for a corporate restructuring decision?
The federal stage brought us another head-scratcher. During a trade visit to Mexico, Prime Minister Mark Carney posed with bags of Canadian wheat stamped with a maple leaf. The problem? Canada doesn’t export wheat in bags. We are among the most efficient bulk grain exporters in the world, shipping millions of tonnes through rail networks and ocean vessels designed for efficiency, safety, and traceability. Bagged wheat is a relic of less mechanized economies. For Canada to present itself this way trivializes our status as a modern agri-food powerhouse. Beyond being misleading, the image suggests to global partners that our system is less advanced than it truly is — a dangerous misrepresentation for a nation that depends on reputation as much as price.
Even I didn’t realize how bad it got until the feds paid contractors to put up a fake building site for Mark Carney to pose in front of, then tore it all down:
