Oh Canada: Scandal and Farce

If hockey is our national sport, political scandal is Canada’s national art form.

The Mulroney-Schreiber affair---the coming judicial inquiry and the afternoon delights of foam-flecked exchanges during Question Period---promises much titillation. Like the Sponsorship Scandal, ample rhetoric will be invested in making it seem that this was one of the darkest affairs in the sordid history of humankind.

The beauty of a full-blown Canadian scandal is that almost no effort is ever made to put it into perspective. How much did the scandal cost taxpayers? To what extent did it change the course of public policy?

The answer to both questions is almost always: not much.

Don’t get me wrong. I am no fan of kickbacks and brown envelopes stuffed with cash. Wrong-doers should be forced to pay for their evil deeds.

It is the art form I enjoy. Jabobean drama, the running of the bulls at Pamplona, and Sumo wrestling cannot compare to the stately procession of a Canadian scandal.

Picture it. What did you know and when did you know it?

The sight of Jack Layton surrounded by the eager faces of NDP caucus members, his face flushed with sweat forming on his ample forehead telling the house that this is no laughing matter. Canadians have had too much scandal, on this side of the house and on that. This must not be treated lightly. Jack has a way of banning the right to laugh or smile that brings on fits of the giggles, in the manner of an overwrought funeral.

Then come the Liberals, their lips pinched and their eyes narrowed to slits. It’s payback time. You besmirched us and now it’s our turn to get you. When did the cover up and the stonewalling begin, they want to know? Does this affair stretch back to Preston Manning’s childhood or the first time John A. Macdonald drank scotch? What was the colour of the envelopes used to deliver the cash? Was it the same colour as the envelopes Liberals favour?

Gilles Duceppe is rejuvenated. His blue eyes are more piercingly hawk-like than they have been since the loss of a seat in a by-election to the Conservatives a couple of months ago. There’s life in the old Bloc yet. A party with no rationale for existing has received the gift of life from yet another scandal.

Stephen Harper stands in his place trying to look as though he was only nine years old when Martin Brian Mulroney, the eighteenth prime minister of Canada, was in office. Inside, he seethes at the thought that he has been side swiped by something that has nothing to do with him. He’s a collateral victim just as Paul Martin was when he was roasted by Adscam, and Ralph Goodale was when he was barbequed by Judy Wasylycia-Leis and the Mounties. Later Goodale was cleared when the election was over and lost, but that’s how the game is played.

Does it occur to Harper, who ran a smear-soaked campaign in 2006, that there’s poetic justice in this swing of the pendulum?

The main event is to be savoured most of all. Brian Mulroney, with his Elvis style white mane, rippling in the wind, as he is conveyed to the inquiry on a tumbrel has vowed to “to fight and win again.” There’s an air of grace about the old prize fighter who belatedly declared the cash payments as income.


Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Jean Chretien brought golf balls with monographs on them when he went to see Justice John Gomery. Martin Brian has more at stake. This will be his judgment day, the last chance to salvage the name his father gave him. Last chance to close some of the yawning gap between himself and Pierre Trudeau, the prime minister Canadians chose to love.