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If you have any interest in federal politics, the end of the pandemic can’t come soon enough. For over a year, Canadians have been governed by Zoom democracy: virtual question periods, committees and press conferences. It’s not like we had many options as three waves of COVID-19 rolled across the country. But as this sorry session of Parliament comes to a sorry close, it is hopefully a situation Canada will not have to repeat.
Why? Because the situation has made it near impossible to hold the government to account. You can’t have a level playing field in question period with one person in the room, and the other just a talking head. The media can’t chase a politician down a hallway in cyberspace. And most Canadians are too busy trying to stay sane through this crisis to pay rapt attention to politicians’ rantings on Twitter.
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It’s déjà vu all over again at the highest levels of Canada’s military: A senior leader of the Canadian Armed Forces is being investigated, causing another officer to step up in an acting capacity for who knows how long, with a domino effect on the other positions at the highest levels. Did the government learn anything from how they handled the vice-admiral Mark Norman affair? I am not so sure. After Norman was suspended from his position, the upper echelons of the armed forces were put into an untenable position. The CAF ended up having seven vice chiefs of the defence staff in about five years, in part because the government did not move forward when it was clear that Norman would be unable to serve even if he was cleared of the charges.
April 14, 2021 · 0 Comments
BROCK’S BANTER
There was excitement in the air this particular April morning.
It was a glorious, cloud-free day with the air just crisp enough to temper the beating sun.
By the time people began to assemble on the lawns of Queen’s Park, it was clear a lot of preparation had gone into what was set to unfold. But, perhaps not. Events of this kind were not exactly unique in the Greater Toronto Area, but they weren’t exactly routine, either.
What they had been preparing for was steeped in tradition. Where you needed to stand, where you needed to move, what you needed to say probably followed more or less the same formula over the preceding 200 years, yet each individual role was rehearsed nonetheless and everyone was determined to ensure things went off without a hitch.