Quotulatiousness

April 25, 2019

Prince Edward Island elects its very first minority government

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

There’s not often news from Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, but in yesterday’s provincial election they did something they’ve never done before: elect a minority government and have the first Green Party official opposition.

Election results map for the April 23, 2019 provincial election.
Blue – PC (36.5% of the vote for 12 seats)
Red – Liberal (29.5% of the vote for 6 seats)
Green – Green Party (30.6% of the vote for 8 seats)
Orange – NDP (2.9% of the vote for 0 seats)
Map via CBC News – https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/pei/2019/results/

Prince Edward Island’s Liberal Premier Wade MacLauchlan lost his own seat to the province’s Progressive Conservatives, who will form the first ever minority government in PEI’s history.

PEI has traditionally had a two-party system, broken in 2015 with a familiar story: a lone Green seat. We saw it in Ontario, New Brunswick, British Columbia, and federally.

The PEI Greens, who for a long time looked poised to form government, will form the official opposition. They will become the only party other than the PCs and Liberals to do so. With a by-election to come in the next months, the Green Party won at least nine seats, a record number of elected Greens in Canada.

Elections in PEI often go unnoticed in most of the country, but this election gained special attention after the tragic news of the death of a candidate and his young son in a canoeing accident.

But Canadians have been keeping a closer eye to other province’s elections. Consider the unusual level of national attention generated by provincial elections in Alberta, Ontario, and elsewhere.

QotD: “Science”

Filed under: Environment, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Ah, science. If you’re even loosely engaged in the wild and dark art that is politics these days, you know by now that “science,” as a word, has taken on an almost mystical meaning. “Science,” in many of its modern incantations, now serves as a form of code, as vague and fuzzy as a Wiccan chant. For a growing number of political activists, the meaning is simple: Science, you see, is a lively mix of standard progressive hobbyhorses, tossed wild-eyed and cranky into one cantankerous bag.

Heather Wilhelm, “The Left’s New Cure-All: ‘Science’”, National Review, 2017-04-12.

April 24, 2019

The west is being haunted by the spectre of the “far right”

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Back in my younger days, I attended a seminar — I think it was Marshall Fritz presenting — that discussed the need to “define, or be defined” as a political tool. If you allow your critics or opponents to set the terms of the debate, you’ve already lost. Arthur Chrenkoff knows this well:

It was not Orwell’s original idea that those who control the language control the society and determine its nature. In any case, the left hardly ever needed inspiration from critics on how to achieve their agenda. They are instinctively good at manipulating speech and cultural expression. Watch out, therefore, for the current pattern of marginalising and delegitimising mainstream ideas they are hostile to by associating them with political fringes.

[…] we increasingly live in a world where, if you believe the media, everywhere you turn there’s the “far right”. Mainstream centre-right ideas and concerns are now being redefined as being somehow associated with and tainted by extremism. If you are worried about the violence against and the persecution of Christians you might be far right. If you value the cultural and philosophical heritage of the Western civilisation you might be far right. If you don’t believe in an open borders immigration policy you might be far right. If you prefer local democracy to transnational institutions you might be far right. If you are defending your country from an armed invasion by another country you might be far right too. If these are all to be the indicators of far right extremism, then what exactly is the “normal” right right now?

This effort to use language as a cudgel has several sinister implications. It delegitimises perfectly normal political ideas through guilt by association. It also creates the impression that the (genuine) far right is much bigger, more influential and more threatening and dangerous than it actually is. This in turn is used to downplay and minimise the dangers of Islamist and far-left extremism and terrorism. But perhaps the scariest aspect of it all is that the left, by manufacturing the far right monster, are actually genuinely contributing to the growth of far-right extremism. The relentless flood of identity politics, grievance and victimhood, and shaming and guilting entire sections of population based on their skin colour and culture is genuinely radicalising some misfits into fascism, like the Christchurch terrorist, for example. For every action there is eventually an equal and opposite reaction. The left might think it’s courageously defanging the fascist dragon but instead it’s just sowing its teeth.

QotD: The Utopia of Damned Fools

Filed under: Government, History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The money began to pour out on November 16, 1933, to the tune of a deafening hullabaloo. By December 1 more than 1,000,000 were on the CWA [Civil Works Administration] pay roll; by January, 1934, the number reached 4,100,000. Press agents in eight-hour shifts worked day and night to tell a panting country what it was all about. The Depression, it was explained, was being given a series of adroit and fatal blows, above, below and athwart the belt. In six months there would be no more unemployment, the wheels of industry would be spinning, and the More Abundant Life would be on us. Brains had at last conquered the fear of fear.

What actually happened belongs to history. By the opening of Spring [Harry] Hopkins had got rid of his billion, and the whole thing had blown up with a bang. More people were out of work than ever before. The wheels of industry resolutely refused to spin. The More Abundant Life continued to linger over the sky line. There ensued a pause for taking breath, and then another stupendous assault was launched upon the taxpayer. This time the amount demanded was $4,880,000,000. It is now in hand, and plans are under way to lay it out where it will do the most good in next year’s campaign.

Go back to the clippings and read them again. Consider well what they say. Four preposterous nonentities, all of them professional uplifters, returning from a junket at the taxpayer’s expense, sit in a smoking car munching peanuts and talking shop. Their sole business in life is spending other people’s money. In the past they have always had to put in four-fifths of their time cadging it, but now the New Deal has admitted them to the vaults of the public treasury, and just beyond the public treasury, shackled in a gigantic lemon-squeezer worked by steam, groans the taxpayer. They feel their oats, and are busting with ideals. For them, at least, the More Abundant Life has surely come.

Suddenly one of them, biting down hard on a peanut, has an inspiration. He leapt to his feet exultant, palpitating like a crusader shinning up the walls of Antioch. How, now, comrade, have you bitten into a worm? Nay, gents, I have thought of a good one, a swell one, the damndest you will ever heard tell of. Why not put everyone to work? Why not shovel it out in a really Large Way. Why higgle and temporize? We won’t be here forever, and when we are gone we’ll be gone a long while.

But the Leader? Wasn’t he babbling again, only the other day, of balancing the budget? Isn’t it a fact that he shows some sign of wobbling of late – that the flop of the NRA [National Recovery Administration] has given him to think? Well, we can only try. We have fetched him before, and maybe we can fetch him again. So the train reaches Washington, the porter gets his tip from the taxpayer’s pocket, and the next day the four brethren meet to figure out the details. But they never get further than a few scratches, for The Leader is in one of his intuitive moods, and his Christian Science smile is in high gear. Say no more, Harry, it is done! The next morning the money begins to gush and billow out of the Treasury. Six months later a billion is gone, and plans are under way to collar five times as much more.

Such is government by the Brain Trust. Such is the fate of the taxpayer under a Planned Economy. Such is the Utopia of Damned Fools.

H.L. Mencken, “The New Deal”, The Mencken Chrestomathy, 1982 (article originally published 1935-05).

April 20, 2019

QotD: They used to be called the Jet Set, but now they’re the Transnational Elite

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… there is a certain level of pride that attaches to being ignorant of those one considers his inferiors. After all, it’s the natural duty of the simple shopkeeper to know the names of the Great Lords, but it is not the duty of the Great Lords to know the names of the shopkeepers. In fact, it’s the Great Lords’ class obligation to go out of their way not to know the names of the shopkeepers, because this Duty to Know flows in one direction — upwards — and hence ignorance of one’s lessers tends to solidify and reify the assumptions of certain castes being superior to others. It makes certain that everyone understands who’s important, and who’s not.

(I know, I sound like a communist — I can’t help it. I have to agree with Dennis the Peasant — “I mean, class is what it’s all about.” I guess I would say I’m agreeing with the communist critique of the rigid reification of class structures, but I happen to think the communists and their pink fellow travelers have largely captured the upper classes. I guess by my theory they’re so good at this because they’ve spent so long plotting vengeance for the exact same slights (which they largely imagined). In a similar way they’ve gotten quite good at blacklisting and guilt-by-association, eh?)

At any rate, it is your duty to know the values and customs of living of Piers Morgan, but due to his high station (ahem) he is proudly ignorant of yours. As is so often the case in our increasingly dysfunctional and nasty politics — in which certain parties refuse to even admit that their opponents are free citizens entitled to have beliefs at all — the Out-Classes are deemed all-but-officially Beneath Notice.

Michael Totten has written a crackerjack piece — or at least I think it is — about this principle in action among our foreign policy sages, the internationalist “elite.” He detects the exact same sort of phenomenon going on when the International “elite” visit foreign nations — because anyone who doesn’t share 90% of their cultural values (and the wealth that permits/encourages these values — the International Elite is not middle-class!) is beneath notice and not worth knowing about, they don’t bother asking anyone but the 3% of the population which largely shares their beliefs and cultural inputs about their intentions and their political agenda.

Which means, in Egypt, they only ask the jet-setting wealthy Westernized elite about the prognosis for Egyptian democracy. And in Lebanon, they only ask the educated, urbane population of Beirut about their desires for the country.

And they ignore all the “Dirty People,” the low people who aren’t worth networking with and probably wouldn’t be any fun to have a sexual affair with. Unfortunately — and this has huge consequences for American foreign policy — it turns out those Dirty Poor People greatly, greatly outnumber the small coteries of educated elites that cluster in every capital country.

And we don’t know about them, because they’re Beneath Notice, and our elites are too busy clinking champagne glasses in the main ballroom of the local Ritz-Carlton franchise.

And so our “elites” — and honestly, we need to start looking for a more accurate discriptor — come back with completely-wrong information about foreign countries.

Why, as Totten says (changing the words a bit), “All of these Egyptians are swell, educated, moderate, sexually-loose cosmopolitans! Why, democracy has a smashing chance of working out here!”

Yeah, not so much. Not so much.

Ace, “The Unburstable Bubble of Willful Ignorance of the International Self-Purported Elites”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2013-01-09.

April 19, 2019

The next Euro-elections as “the second referendum”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Julie Cook wonders why the Remoaners seem so eager to cast the May 23 European elections as the second referendum they’ve been eager to have, as the early indications show something less than full eagerness among British voters for any of the pro-remain groups:

Timothy Garton Ash is, I think, making something of a mistake here. For he’s calling for the upcoming euro-elections to be seen as a second referendum on our leaving the European Union. The point being that this is going to be something of a hostage to fortune.

Perhaps more importantly the more Remoaners call for it to be seen and treated as such the more likely we are to see what lying toads they are.

    Britain will have its second referendum – on 23 May. Don’t miss it
    Timothy Garton Ash This is a crucial chance to show politicians how we feel now about leaving Europe. The turnout must be huge

The point being, well, what if Leave wins?

    In just five weeks’ time, Britain will have a referendum on Brexit. This will take the form of elections to the European parliament, but in reality this will be a pre-referendum, or, if you like your neologisms ugly, a preferendum. So there is now one simple task: to maximise the vote for parties that support a confirmatory referendum on Brexit, giving the British people a democratic choice between accepting the negotiated Brexit deal and remaining in the EU.

And there’s the toad bit. There’s a significant portion of the population who’d prefer to just Leave. Don’t care about the terms, the deal, let’s just leave the b’tards to stew in their own juices and we’ll get on with solving whatever problems remain after we’ve not remained. And this is a significant portion – perhaps not a majority, maybe not even a plurality but that’s going to be the interesting test

Early polls show that Nigel Farage and his new Brexit Party are in the lead over both Labour and the Conservatives. Of course, he’ll have to weather a full month of unbridled hate and slander from the media, but what can they possibly say about him or his new party that they haven’t already screamed and bellowed before? Once you’ve fired all the invective in your shot locker, you don’t stand much chance of changing anyone’s opinion if they didn’t react the first dozen times.

QotD: The revolution will be YouTubed, which might snuff it out before it gets underway

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I think that a number of factors will ultimately tamp it down [campus protests/riots]. The ability of people to record videos of police has been a tremendous spur to calls for reform. But police are not the only people who can be filmed in public; so can protesters. I suspect that as people discover what can happen when future employers google up videos of you shouting “[expletive deleted] the police” or screaming at professors and speakers, the costs of this sort of protest will rise, and there will be less of it. Moreover, I suspect that both alumni and state funding for schools where this sort of thing happens a lot will often decline, putting pressure on administrators to curb it.

Megan McArdle, “Ask Me Anything”, Reddit, 2017-04-10.

April 17, 2019

Theresa May has been brilliantly successful in achieving her (true) aims

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Theodore Dalrymple admits having misjudged Mrs. May as a failure, when in fact her plans have been coming brilliantly to fruition:

Like almost everyone else, I regarded [Theresa May] as a pygmy in courage and a giant in incompetence, but it is time for a re-assessment, especially with regard to her efforts to Britain’s exit from the European Union. After the Union granted a further delay to Britain’s departure, the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said that it was his secret dream to prevent Britain from leaving. It is pleasing to know that Mr Tusk’s secret dreams so entirely coincide with those of the British political class, including (I surmise) those of Mrs May. At last we have a basis for full and final agreement.

Like the great majority of the British political class, Mrs May was always in favour of remaining in the Union. This class was so confident of its ability to persuade the population that it was right that it agreed with practically no demur to a referendum which would pronounce the winner as the side which obtained 50 per cent plus one of the votes cast. Thus the matter of British membership, it thought, would be settled once and for all.

The problem for the political class was now to find a method of overriding the result of the referendum without doing so in too blatant a fashion. And here, in Mrs May, it found a perfect leader.

Needless to say, Mrs May, having been selected as Prime Minister, could not just put forward her conviction that Britain should remain in the Union and say outright that she had no intention of carrying out the will of the majority. At that stage, such a disavowal of the result would have been politically impossible and might even have caused unrest. Instead, she went through a brilliantly elaborate charade of negotiating withdrawal, in such a way that the result would not be accepted by Parliament. Her agreement would be withdrawal without withdrawal, the worst of all possible outcomes, all complication and difficulty, and no benefit.

She knew perfectly well that the European Union, having drafted this agreement unacceptable to Parliament, would not renegotiate it. Why should it, since it knew that Parliament had no intention of demanding a real and total withdrawal, since it did not want to withdraw at all? She also knew that Parliament would never agree to a withdrawal without an agreement with the Union, as Parliament has repeatedly made clear.

April 14, 2019

The repressive new intellectual orthodoxy

Filed under: Britain, China, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Roger Scruton discusses the interview he gave to the New Statesman:

I recently gave an interview to the New Statesman, on the assumption that, as the magazine’s former wine critic I would be treated with respect, and that the journalist, George Eaton, was sincere in wanting to talk to me about my intellectual life. Not for the first time I am forced to acknowledge what a mistake it is to address young leftists as though they were responsible human beings. Here is my brief response to an unscrupulous collection of out of context remarks, some of them merely words designed to accuse me of thought-crimes, and to persuade the government that I am not fit to be chairman of the commission recently entrusted to me.

[…]

In retrospect I could have chosen the words more carefully. But my purpose was to point out that anti-Semitism has become an issue in Hungary, and an obstacle to a shared national identity. As for the Soros Empire, I am the only person I know who has actually tried to persuade Viktor Orbán to accept its presence, and that of the Central European University in particular, in Hungary. I did not succeed, but that is another matter. I should add that I am neither a friend nor an enemy of Orbán, but know him from the days when I helped him and his colleagues to set up a free university under the communists. What Orbán did then was the first step towards the liberation of his country, and George Soros was one of those who helped him too. It is sad for Hungary that the two have fallen out, and that the old spectre of anti-Semitism has been reborn from their clash. Given their two aggressive personalities, however, it is hardly surprising.

[…]

Finally, my comments on China: I was describing the attempt of the Chinese Communist Party to achieve conformity of behaviour in everything that might threaten its comprehensive political control, and I think it is fair to describe this as an attempt to robotise the Chinese people. The Communist Party expects each person to replicate the behavioural code, not questioning its authority and finding safety in imitation. Many people see the threat of this in the attitude of Beijing towards Hong Kong. Far more important, to my mind, is the internment of a million or more Uighur Muslims, in order to clean their minds of the dangerous God idea and re-programme them with the Party idea instead. If we are not allowed to criticise this as the robotising of the victims, then what are we allowed to criticise and how?

We in Britain are entering a dangerous social condition in which the direct expression of opinions that conflict – or merely seem to conflict – with a narrow set of orthodoxies is instantly punished by a band of self-appointed vigilantes. We are being cowed into abject conformity around a dubious set of official doctrines and told to adopt a world view that we cannot examine for fear of being publicly humiliated by the censors. This world view might lead to a new and liberated social order; or it might lead to the social and spiritual destruction of our country. How shall we know, if we are too afraid to discuss it?

April 9, 2019

QotD: It won’t be easy to bring back politicians’ willingness to compromise

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I think the donors are a problem for both parties, in terms of driving choices that aren’t necessarily the best strategies for building the base. (Both parties completely missed the populist backlash on trade, for example. Now, as a free trader, I like the resulting policy. But they paid for it at the polls.) But the issue isn’t fundamentally the donors. The issue is that fundamentally, both sides hate each other, and both sides have an increasing “It is not enough that I win. My enemies must lose” mentality about politics. Combine that with various reforms that have empowered extremists — campaign finance reforms that empowered outside groups, yes, but also the shift to primaries from conventions, and the abolition of the earmarks and pork that used to grease legislative passage. Throw in the “Great Sort” into increasingly politically homogenous communities — those are the problems you need to fix if you want to bring back legislative compromise. And damned if I know how we get there, because you can’t tell people where to live, and anyone who suggested getting rid of primary elections and bringing back pork barrel politics would come off as a backroom sleaze.

Megan McArdle, “Ask Me Anything”, Reddit, 2017-04-10.

April 8, 2019

George Orwell BBC Arena Part 5 Nineteen Eighty Four

Filed under: Books, Britain, History, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Alan Ruben
Published on 31 May 2013

Part 5 of an in-depth 5 part series about George Orwell made in 1983.

April 7, 2019

Justin’s SNC-Lavalin swamp … how deep does it go?

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

For a penny-ante scandal where there’s no hint of sexual impropriety or unmarked bundles of bills being passed along in brown paper bags, Justin’s SNC-Lavalin scandal looks more and more interesting the more we look at it:

A game-changing bombshell lies buried in the supplementary evidence provided to the House of Commons Judiciary Committee by former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould.

It has gone virtually unreported since she submitted the material almost a week ago. As far as we can find, only one journalist — Andrew Coyne, columnist for the National Post — has even mentioned it and even then he badly missed what it meant, burying it in paragraph 10 of a 14 paragraph story.

The gist of the greatest political scandal in modern Canadian history is well-known by now. It’s bigger than Adscam, the revelation 15 years ago that prominent members of the Liberal Party of Canada and the party itself funneled tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks into their own pockets from federal spending in Quebec sponsoring ads promoting Canadian unity. That was just venal politicians and a crooked political party helping themselves to public money.

The Trudeau-SNC-Lavalin scandal is so much more, involving the corruption of the supposedly non-partisan civil service, and even the judiciary, for the political benefit of a disgraced political party, and a cover-up endorsed, encouraged and actively engaged in by the sitting Members of Parliament of that political party.

[…]

Which brings us to the ticking-timebomb-evidence the committee and the public didn’t get to hear.

In between the appearances by Butts and Warnick, Wilson-Raybould testified to getting a report from her chief of staff who had had a meeting with Butts and Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford. They aggressively pushed the attorney general to get an “outside” opinion from someone like the retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Beverley McLachlin, on dropping the criminal charges against SNC-Lavalin in favour of a non-criminal plea deal.

Wilson-Raybould took contemporary notes of what her staff member told her.

    “My COS (chief of staff…ed) asked what if the opinion comes saying “She can review it, but she shouldn’t” or simply “She can’t review it” end of story? Mr. Butts stated “It wouldn’t say that.”

BOOM!!!!!!

Read what Butts said again. And again. And again.

“IT WOULDN’T SAY THAT”

H/T to Halls of Macademia and Small Dead Animals for the link.

April 6, 2019

“The Prime Minister has repaid my loyalty with betrayal”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Despite the full applicability of the headline to Canadian politics, this isn’t about the Dauphin’s betrayal of cabinet ministers or the Canadian people, it’s actually Matt Ridley talking about Prime Minister Theresa May:

The Prime Minister has ignored the views of the majority of her Cabinet and ruled out No Deal. The reason, we are told, is that No Deal might lead to the re-imposition of direct rule over Northern Ireland, and might lead to a second Scottish independence referendum.

That either of these considerations should outweigh the independence of the United Kingdom from an increasingly decrepit but increasingly autocratic empire is bizarre. If No Deal causes a second referendum in Scotland – we were told that the vote itself would cause that too, remember, but it did not – then we will win that too.

But more bizarre is that these worries have existed all along. If the Prime Minister thinks the risk of direct rule in Northern Ireland (which is happening in practice anyway) trumps all other considerations, and rules out No Deal, then why did she not say so more than two years ago or at any time since? Instead, she said 108 times that we would leave the EU on 29th March, whatever happens; 50 times that she would not extend that date; and 32 times that No Deal is better than a bad deal. Not once did she say it was impossible.

[…]

Mrs May should have ruled out No Deal at the start of the negotiations, if that is what she thought, or she should have meant “No Deal is better than a bad deal” when she said it. As it is, the combination of threatening No Deal until the moment when it might actually matter in the negotiations, then dropping the threat on the feeblest of latest excuses, is about as foolish as one can imagine. And now rushing off to hand the initiative to an apologist for totalitarians, anti-Semites and terrorists instead. Thanks.

The Prime Minister and her allies are now chanting that it is all the fault of the European Research Group for rejecting her deal and are saying they have no alternative than the dismal choices of supporting her deal or no Brexit, as if amnesiac about the third option: their recent promises to leave with No Deal if necessary. Yet the truth is that ever since the debacle at Chequers in July, when everybody from half the Cabinet to the Democratic Unionists to the media to the people themselves told her quite clearly that she would never get the Chequers plan through Parliament, she has been the one at fault.

George Orwell BBC Arena Part 3 Homage to Catalonia

Filed under: Books, Britain, Europe, History, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Alan Ruben
Published on 9 May 2013

Part 3 of an in-depth 5 part series about George Orwell made in 1983.

SNC-Lavalin – Justin couldn’t admit that he was wr… wr… wr… not right

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the Prime Minister’s odd decision not to get ahead of the SNC-Lavalin scandal while he still had some credibility with the public:

It seems like another century, but was in fact only a few weeks ago, that Justin Trudeau had a plausible plan to cauterize the SNC-Lavalin wound within his party: He would apologize for … something.

Presumably he would not apologize for trying to protect 9,000 jobs, and presumably he would not admit improper interference in the attorney general’s and director of public prosecution’s roles. But perhaps he might cop to overzealousness in concern for those jobs, or for poorly communicating his entirely appropriate concerns, or for the various anonymous party sources who were slagging off Jody Wilson-Raybould to friendly journalists.

The latter, certainly, seemed downright imperative. Trudeau and his minions, either under orders or self-assigning, had snatched calamity from the jaws of bother. They were badmouthing an accomplished Indigenous female lawyer for being headstrong, “difficult to work with,” and various other descriptors commonly attached to Type A women when they behave like Type A men. When they ran out of those, they started insinuating she wasn’t a very good justice minister — which is certainly an arguable point, but which rather clashed with Trudeau’s insistence she would still hold that title if not for Scott Brison’s impending departure.

It was absolutely torching their brand. People were laughing in their faces. Something had to be done. And this stand-by-for-contrition narrative was lent some credence, fittingly enough, by anonymous sources. “A senior government official said one of the options being discussed is for Trudeau to ‘show some ownership over the actions of his staff and officials’ in their dealings with his former attorney general,” CBC reported on March 5.

Floating a trial balloon to measure potential reactions is not often prelude to the sincerest of apologies. But in the end, no real apology was forthcoming. The brand-torching continued unabated. And by Wednesday this week, the Anonymous Sources had come full circle: Wilson-Raybould had set various extraordinary conditions for remaining in Cabinet, they told various outlets.

One of them was that Trudeau apologize.

In Maclean’s, Paul Wells wonders why SNC-Lavalin has shaken the Liberals so much:

How did this scandal manage to rattle this government so profoundly? And the best answer I can find is this: Because it reveals truths about this Prime Minister that shake many Canadians’ confidence in him.

As my moral betters in the newspaper columns never tire of repeating, by many standards the SNC-Lavalin mess is quite modest. It seems probable that no money changed hands improperly in 2018 and no law was broken. The protagonists were motivated mostly by a kind of distracted hunch that jobs might be at stake. I mean, the extent to which they had zero evidence for that is breathtaking, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. And also by a similarly vague suspicion that it might be bad for branded Liberal candidates if SNC ran into trouble ahead of a Quebec or federal election.

[…]

Finally, all three of these scandalettes have laid bare a stubbornly ramshackle approach to running what has sometimes been a serious country. When flying to India, sure, pack your embroidered sherwani and your convicted attempted murderer, but also maybe bring along a travel plan, a sales pitch and a list of objectives worth achieving. Especially if your ineptitude is about to guarantee you will never get a second chance to visit India.

On SNC, what emerges from all the testimony is the impression that a dozen kids from the McGill debating team snuck into the abandoned ruins of Ottawa and started pretending to be the government of Canada. Jody complained to Bill that Elder and Ben were being mean to Jessica. Justin sent Michael but somehow Michael didn’t have the Section 13 ruling Jody had sent to Mathieu. Then it was Christmas and they all went home for a month.

Where the hell were the 208,000 public servants whose job was to ensure options were explored and workflows respected? Why, in September, when Wernick says everyone was distracted by NAFTA, did nobody at the weekly deputy ministers’ meeting say, “Well, there’s only room for 10 people at the NAFTA table, so why don’t the rest of us strike a working group of officials from Justice, Finance, Innovation and the Privy Council to ride this SNC puppy until we know what’s what?”

I’m pretty sure the reason this didn’t happen is that Butts found it thrilling to have all the important conversations run through his phone. That’s a bush-league reason to stumble into a government-shaking mess.

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