Yahoo Finance William Watson: Is Ottawa trying to game Canadians?
Is it just me or is Ottawa making even less sense than usual?
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says Canadians are tired of Justin Trudeau. The polls agree. Yet Singh refuses to give Canadians a chance to send the prime minister on to a new chapter of his lived experience by voting non-confidence in his government and forcing a federal election. According to Singh, this would be playing “Pierre Poilievre’s game.”
Poilievre also believes Canadians are tired of Trudeau and would like to see him gone, as the polls confirm. Yet acting on that widespread sentiment among Canadians would be “Poilievre’s game,” and not “Canadians’ game,” because the person who Canadians are most likely to vote for to succeed Trudeau is Poilievre, whom Singh can’t abide — in part because he is not Singh. The NDP leader, in his wisdom, won’t permit Canadians to commit that error.
Which means Canadians must play “Singh’s game.” They can’t give effect to their fatigue with the prime minister but must put up with him for an indeterminate number of months not exceeding 12 until Singh himself decides the time is right for a vote. This also gives Liberal legislation that Singh favours a chance to get through Parliament, Singh having decided on their behalf that it is more important for Canadians to benefit from the Liberals’ policy than to dump the Liberals’ leader. Of course, delay also gives Singh more time to persuade Canadians their best alternative to Trudeau is not Poilievre but Singh. In Ottawa such action is regarded as selflessly patriotic.
While the status quo persists, federal party leaders are being asked to police their caucuses and riding associations against foreign interference. In other countries, policing is the responsibility of police forces. In this country, evidently, party leaders are the relevant legal officers.
When I was young and feeble-minded (as one tends to be when young) I sent a money order for US$25 to the McGovern for President campaign. After some weeks, it was returned, along with a letter thanking me for my support but explaining that foreign donations were against U.S. election law. As things turned out, McGovern’s opponent, Richard Nixon, won 60.7 per cent of the vote and all 50 states save Massachusetts, so the time and resources the campaign wasted explaining U.S. election law to me seemed not to have been decisive. Two years later, Nixon resigned when it was discovered he had helped cover up the fact his campaign, CREEP, the Committee to Re-elect the President, had engaged in domestic election interference by breaking into Democratic Party headquarters in Washington’s famous-ever-after Watergate building.
My experience with the McGovern for President people suggested they understood and were willing to abide by the election laws. I don’t know if this was because they were just good citizens or feared the consequences if they were caught. Whatever: the U.S. system successfully repelled my attempt at foreign interference. (I hope it will as effectively repel the 100 Labour Party staffers who, in an amazing example of diplomatic bone-headedness, are heading off to the U.S. to knock on swing-state doors for Kamala Harris.)
If foreigners have broken our election laws, by all means let’s prosecute them. If Canadians have helped foreigners break our election laws, let’s prosecute them, too — to the full extent the law allows, an attack on our democracy being an attack on all of us. If our laws don’t allow us to prosecute foreigners for trying to interfere in our elections, then let’s change our laws. But let’s get on with it.
And let’s, as quickly as we can, dispense with the insider system under which party leaders are supposed to swear an oath of secrecy, receive classified tidbits from CSIS or the RCMP and police their own parties themselves, without of course telling anyone about what they’re doing except the compromised individuals, whose rumour-enshrouded abrupt departures supposedly to spend more time with their families will hound them the rest of their lives. The argument our spy agencies make that going public with damning information could jeopardize methods or other investigations is self-serving and self-aggrandizing. Forgive a skeptical citizen for supposing what can’t be compromised may be the dubious quality of the evidence.
Our system, the one foreigners apparently are attempting to undermine, takes seriously people’s inalienable right to defend themselves against open accusations of unlawful behaviour. If a (literally!) Manchurian candidate is suddenly denied nomination papers by a party leader, you can bet his or her foreign handlers will be aware of that and will find new ways of operating whether or not charges are laid or details become public.
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Here are words my McGovern-era self could never have imagined me uttering: Thank Goodness for the FBI! Most Canadians are learning about the details of the Indian government’s interference — “with extreme prejudice,” as they used to say in the Nixon White House — in the lives of Canadian citizens on Canadian soil through the recent unsealing of an indictment against similar Indian actions in the U.S.
Let’s bring foreign interference into the sunlight, lay charges where charges are warranted and see if we can’t get criminal cases through our courts in fewer than five years.
