Well, ready or not, we’re all off on another trip around the sun.
I had a lot of ideas kicking around in my head for the first editorial of the year, wanting to start things off on a high note. I had already begun working on a rough draft, rehashing a few of my previous hot takes from last year’s papers to complement our review of last year’s news items.
However, before I could make a decent amount of headway, a whirlwind of events kicked off and now I’m back at square one.
The aforementioned tempest was the breaking news that . . .
a large number of elected officials at both the provincial and federal level had travelled outside the country over the holidays. There were new stories emerging every day, as more scandalous details emerged and more parties forced their members to fess up and absorb the public ridicule. Offenders were all over the political spectrum too, with everyone from NDP MP Nikki Ashton, to the Quebec Liberals’ former interim leader Pierre Arcand to Ontario’s Conservative Finance Minister Rod Phillips feeling the heat.
While not technically against the rules, assuming they observed public health guidelines the entire time and quarantined upon their return, the optics of highly-paid public figures gallivanting across the globe while their constituents were told to stay at home provoked an enormous amount of backlash.
To be fair, some of these politicians’ explanations were mitigating factors, claiming they only travelled to visit dying relatives or to settle a deceased family member’s estate. While this explanation might make them appear slightly less repulsive than the dolts that vacationed in Hawaii or the Caribbean, this issue struck a very personal chord. I and the majority of my extended family weren’t able to attend my grandfather’s funeral in Nova Scotia this past May and even the few permitted at the ceremony were subject to very onerous conditions. It was, uh, suboptimal to say the least and while I might empathize with those in a similar predicament, nobody put a gun to their head and forced them to run for elected office. They deserve a fair share of the scorn and demotions like the rest because in a functioning democracy, public officials should be held to a higher standard than their constituents. To have enough disposable income for international travel as well as the luxury of being able to isolate for the recommended two weeks means they’re far more privileged than most.
In addition, the weasels trying to blunt the blow by proactively publishing their itineraries, some dating as far back as a few months ago, likely wouldn’t have disclosed these facts if the story about that duplicitous swine Phillips hadn’t dominated the news cycle. It’s blatant ass-covering, likely done at the behest of their party’s spin doctors, and deserves zero credit.
However, the most damning thing that can be said about this whole goat rodeo was that it undermined the public’s severely depleted trust in our institutions and the rationale behind our current public health guidelines. In our region, there was already a healthy backlash to the last-minute imposition of more restrictions, since we’ve been lucky enough to avoid any large-scale outbreaks for the better part of a year.
If someone actually followed the rules all this time, no matter how slap-dash or confusing, these globetrotters make a mockery of their sacrifices.
If someone was already down a conspiratorial rabbit-hole and thought the pandemic restrictions were an elaborate charade cooked up by nefarious actors, it’s hard to think of better evidence than a bunch of two-faced suits heading for the beach in the midst of a catastrophe.
Protests and public flouting of the rules, like the demonstration that took place in Shawville over the weekend, are only going to become more common the longer this goes on.
Leaders shouldn’t ask for sacrifices from their constituents that they themselves aren’t willing to undergo. You’d think that would be obvious but this past week has proven otherwise.
Caleb Nickerson
