The rest of the world must wonder what is happening in Canada. There is a scandal there but what is the scandal all about? There seems to be no sex, no money, and no corruption. Well the last two are not exactly true, but hey! We’re Canadian. We tend to do our corruption and money stuff overseas.
When Justin Trudeau came to power, his rallying cry was “Sunny ways, my friends”. After nearly a decade of the morose, regulation busting, dreary conservative reign of Stephen Harper, Canadians clearly wanted something different – and they got it. A one-term MP from Quebec, ex-school teacher, son of his father Pierre, burst upon the political scene. Things would be different now. We could smile again.
And we did smile – for a while. A cabinet 50-50 men and women. A fresh new start on aboriginal relations in Canada. We started to take the environmental crisis seriously.
But there was a hidden flaw. At some point, appearance seemed to take over from substance. I trace this back to the disastrous trip to India in February 2018 by Justin Trudeau and his family. They should have known about the hazards of trying to bridge a cultural divide – all for the sake of business, of course. We saw scenes of his whole family dressed in ‘extravagant’ Indian attire. The trouble was the Indians said, “Even we don’t dress like that anymore”. And then a shady, past-convicted Sikh extremist turned up on the trip.
Now I come to the SNC-Lavalin affair. Yes, there was a personal struggle between the Prime Minister and Jody Wilson-Raybould the Attorney General/Justice Minister. These struggles surely must happenin all governments. But here you had a struggle between a young dashing ‘feminist’ PM taking on a strong indigenous woman. This struggle now has burst upon the public scene. I think that the feminist PM at some point will wish that he had acknowledged something earlier. Yes, he pushed too hard. But hey, he was the PM after all. But he did give her enormous power as both AG and Justice minister.
In Greek tragedies, the hero has a hidden flaw – and for all his/her strengths, the flaw finally ends up by bringing him down.
When Justin Trudeau came to power, his rallying cry was “Sunny ways, my friends”. After nearly a decade of the morose, regulation busting, dreary conservative reign of Stephen Harper, Canadians clearly wanted something different – and they got it. A one-term MP from Quebec, ex-school teacher, son of his father Pierre, burst upon the political scene. Things would be different now. We could smile again.
And we did smile – for a while. A cabinet 50-50 men and women. A fresh new start on aboriginal relations in Canada. We started to take the environmental crisis seriously.
But there was a hidden flaw. At some point, appearance seemed to take over from substance. I trace this back to the disastrous trip to India in February 2018 by Justin Trudeau and his family. They should have known about the hazards of trying to bridge a cultural divide – all for the sake of business, of course. We saw scenes of his whole family dressed in ‘extravagant’ Indian attire. The trouble was the Indians said, “Even we don’t dress like that anymore”. And then a shady, past-convicted Sikh extremist turned up on the trip.
Now I come to the SNC-Lavalin affair. Yes, there was a personal struggle between the Prime Minister and Jody Wilson-Raybould the Attorney General/Justice Minister. These struggles surely must happenin all governments. But here you had a struggle between a young dashing ‘feminist’ PM taking on a strong indigenous woman. This struggle now has burst upon the public scene. I think that the feminist PM at some point will wish that he had acknowledged something earlier. Yes, he pushed too hard. But hey, he was the PM after all. But he did give her enormous power as both AG and Justice minister.
In Greek tragedies, the hero has a hidden flaw – and for all his/her strengths, the flaw finally ends up by bringing him down.
No comments:
Post a Comment