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Poor Morneau was, for the next few days, sent into exile

Poor Morneau was, for the next few days, sent into exile from question period, while the prime minister and a few of his hapless front benchers tried to rescue the total botch of tax reform, and, of far more consequence, attempted to provide some sort of defence for the embroiled Minister of Finance. Question period became a factory of non-sequiturs, illogicalities, and some of the most ham-handed, amateur-hour evasions and denials to ever disgrace the pages of Hansard.

I think it is dawning on some that our celebrity prime minister is great at first nights, foreign conferences, concerts, We Days, Women in Power summits, and American morning TV shows. As a master of ceremonies or the guest celebrity of the day, he’s a winner.

But in question period, he is on alien ground. In question period, he should own an honorary spot on the opposition benches.

Question period was a factory of illogicalities and amateur hour evasions

If there was a low point this week (and it is difficult to select just one out of its spate of mumbles and jumbles), it would have to be when the prime minister made the beautiful malapropism of twice referring to Mary Dawson as the “Conflict of Ethics Commissioner.”

This is more than a hint that the prime minister doesn’t really understand the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. Commissioner Mary Dawson is NOT the first or last authority on the ethics of the House or its members. They are. The House is. And the prime minister as government leader is, or should be, the first guardian and watchdog over the behaviour of his ministers and members. Mary Dawson is just a source of prudent backup. The attempts of the prime minister and finance minister to outsource their ethical standards to a parliamentary office, to position Dawson as somehow responsible for the deep pit they have so zealously excavated for themselves, is an outrage.

This week is, I think, a turning point. The shallowness of the government was on extended display. Trudeau may have learned that leadership goes beyond chanting pale tag-lines as if they were voodoo spells of oratory. Endless muttering of “diversity is our strength” and “growing the middle class” is not, after all, the whole of governing.