Month: November 2020

Another Covid-19 mess up.

Once again Trudeau is playing word games and laying down a smoke screen to give some cover to his inept ministers and government.

From screwing up the timing of our border closings, to giving China tons of PPE equipment that we needed for our front line workers; to buying lots of vaccine, but without making sure we were at the head of the line.

He can brag about how many doses he bought, but if you can’t deliver them and vaccinate people, it is a hollow victory. Here we are on the edge of 2021 and he really has no firm date, exact numbers, or distribution plan to get Canadians vaccinated. Just another Trudeau screw-up.

Today we learned that most Canadians will only be vaccinated by late September, how many million will that still leave unprotected? How many will die or become seriously ill?

I will also remind people who have worked in government how long it takes Health Canada to approve something, even if the item has already been approved in the USA and several different European countries.

Trudeau has the habit of misleading us over and over- too many broken promises to list here and he gets away with it. Thank goodness this isn’t a Conservative government messing this up or we would be seeing Canadian media with wall to wall negative coverage like we saw them do with Trump.

Trudeau can use “By the end of September” as a good talk point if he is planning a spring election and he is hoping to keep control of this issue until it is over. It provides a sense of hope for people desperately waiting for their turn.

Sadly, from Trudeau it is just a lot of blah, blah blah and its even sadder that the media let him get away with this nonsense.

In politics, perception/optics is everything. This is one reason political attack teams exist.

However, it is rare that any one issue defines your political opponent. It is even rarer in Canadian politics that one issue will bring down a minister or a government. What happens is that over time the constant political hammering helps to shape the public perception of your opponent or their party.

I can think back to the “Mr. Dithers” nickname coined by my attack team which helped to define Prime Minister Paul Martin.

On occasion your opponent hands you a gift in the form of a comment made, or action taken or a major misstep by one of their own team members. We can all remember the disastrous Stephane Dion video in 2008 and his now infamous shrug.

The Conservatives were handed such a gift recently with the revelation that Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi had for years been paying her sister to work in her constituency office- a clear violation of the rules.

The Conservative attack team kicked into high gear. This was a golden opportunity to use this incident to try to reinforce their theme of a corrupt Liberal government with ethical issues.

However, another unwritten rule in politics is don’t throw stones in glass houses. Before you go hell bent on attacking your opponent make sure your side does not face the same issue.

The Conservative attack withered when it was revealed that their former leader, Andrew Scheer, had employed his sister-in-law in his constituency office. It should be noted that this was not against the rules, but that killed the thrust of the Conservative attack. Did no one on the attack team send out an email to all of their MPS to make sure that they were not facing a similar problem? If Scheer knew they were going after Ratansi, did he warn his own team of his issue before they launched their attacks on the Liberals?

The issue for the Conservatives was further clouded when after the story broke, Scheer fired his sister-in-law. Like it or not it leaves the perception that something was wrong. It actually reinforces the Liberal push back. It also confirms the perception that Scheer is a bumbler- remember the claim for education costs for his children that was kept from party members or losing an election that was his to win.

Unless the Conservatives get creative, the Ratansi issue has lost steam and the public is left thinking the Conservatives are no better than the Liberals. That is not the perception they want to leave with voters if they hope to win the next election.

Wouldn’t it be nice to actually watch some Canadian news that does not include wall to wall coverage of Trump or Covid-19?

The Canadian media’s breathless fascination with every tweet from Trump or mutterings of every so-called political expert (99% of whom you have never heard of before) on the USA situation has become repetitious and frankly boring.

The same holds true for the daily Covid updates with our media talking heads breathlessly announcing the new numbers, keeping score hour by hour. How many “expert” medical commentators can they dream up? How about adding some context to the new daily numbers- what age groups, how many were in long term care homes etc. I wear my mask; I am in an at risk age category and a business that brings me into contact with a lot of people- that information is important. If you are going to broadcast numbers give me details.

Believe it or not there is some other Canadian news out there- the destruction of documents intended for a parliamentary committee review (hey guys they are saved on more than one server), a government racking up debt at an alarming pace without bringing in a formal budget (our grandchildren will be paying for Trudeau’s spending), a so-called green plan is coming and I bet there will be no release of economic studies on its impact in the short and long terms. But somehow the colour of Trump’s hair is important.

The truth is its easier to regurgitate numbers supplied to you on Covid-19 than to investigate the details. It is easier to quote Trump and US experts than to do investigative journalism here.