In Ottawa, there is only a fractional hold on the truth left
National Post, 19 June 2022
the committee set up to investigate why the Emergencies Act was used has acquired more than a touch of farce
It’s too serious to be funny, but the committee set up to investigate why the Emergencies Act was used has acquired more than a touch of farce.
The options laid before the special parliamentary committee are twofold: Mendacious Marco or Misunderstood Minister Mendicino?
Either the minister of public safety lied — repeatedly, robustly, resolutely — to Parliament, to Canadians, to his barber, butcher, baker and candlestick maker, or he was singularly, spectacularly, stunningly unable to make himself understood. Neither option — mendacity or a massive incapacity to communicate — is a desideratum for a minister of the Crown.
Mendicino has made it clear that while he was misunderstood, misconstrued and misinterpreted, he was not mendacious. That places a rather heavy burden even upon the supple semantic resources of the English language, but most commentators have tried mightily to extend the benefit of the doubt.
My concern goes rather beyond the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde dyad of Mendacious Marco/Misunderstood Mendicino. Whether or not one minister lied about the Emergencies Act, the more significant development is that many of our ministers have been telling us things that aren’t true almost daily for the past two years. The mendacity/misunderstanding matter may have simply arisen from ministers getting out of practice in telling the truth.
The political virus which migrated from the Middle Kingdom alongside COVID-19 eroded governments’ capacity to tell the truth. Lying was deliberate in China; it was likely not so in the democracies. Nevertheless, no matter how pure the intention, governments have been telling their citizens things that are simply not true for quite some time now. The consequences of that will long outlast the pandemic. And when citizens no longer trust the government to tell the truth, for whatever cause, the consequence is enduring.
Just review what we have been told in 2022.
Much of what we were told about the bouncy castle blockade, such as the level of foreign funding or plans to overthrow the government, have been wildly exaggerated; and others were outright false, such as the disproven allegation of truckers trying to set fire to a downtown Ottawa apartment building.
The decision by the Ontario government to lift restrictions soon after the trucker convoy was presented by Doug Ford as unrelated to same. He said that it was “the science.” That could have been true, or not true, or a bit of both — given that “the science” means whatever the policymaker decides that it means.
The interminable backlogs making it impossible to get a passport in a timely fashion? Karina Gould, the responsible minister said, “you can’t necessarily forecast human behaviour.” Not true. There are literally tens of thousands of federal bureaucrats who do just that. They just did it poorly this time.
Continue reading at the National Post.