There is an old rule in political communications: if you have bad news to deliver, do it before a long weekend.

True to that tradition, Canadians got a large dose of dreadful news on Thursday: dismal, record-setting unemployment numbers and some sobering forecasts for how long the country will remain plunged in physical distancing, self-isolation and an economic coma.

While Canada’s top public health officials aren’t politicians, Dr. Theresa Tam and Dr. Howard Njoo were bobbing and weaving like political pros on Thursday around precise answers on how long Canadians are going to be living as we are right now. “Summer” seemed to be the best-case scenario — that’s at least a couple of long weekends from now.

It was left to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to put the hard truth in plain language afterward “This is the new normal,” he said.

Politicians peddling bad news — just one indication that the relationship between Canadians and their democratic representatives is in the midst of a fundamental shift.

If this is the new normal, as Trudeau said on Thursday, it’s not just citizens’ lives that are changing, but the rules of political engagement too. Those rules have already been changing over the past four weeks, right before people’s eyes.

Since we’re apparently in for the long haul, perhaps this is a good time to sit back and review just what the new political normal in Canada will be for at least the next few months, and possibly beyond that.

First, all the old 1980s-era rhetoric about getting government out of people’s lives is gone. We can now officially retire that Ronald Reagan joke about how the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” A pandemic, with all respect to the late president, is significantly more scary.

Canadians haven’t been this massively dependent on government handouts in generations. Back in the pre-pandemic era, many Canadians interacted with the federal government only once a year, at tax time, and grudgingly. We are now tax-receivers as well as taxpayers, in a large way, and likely for a long time.

Like it or not, and somewhat related to that new dependence on government, we are in the midst of rethinking this whole business of deference to the people who run the country. Our government is asking a lot of the citizens, through a delicate dance of fear and far-off incentives — sticks and the promise of carrots, if you like. We are modifying our behaviour, our daily lives, because our government is telling us to do so. That’s remarkable, when you think about it. Not so long ago, we were more likely to be nudged into behaviour changes by celebrities or experts.

Red-tape reduction and bureaucratic streamlining: One of the reasons citizens hate dealing with government is that it is notoriously slow and bureaucratic. Remember when the government said it was going to take years to fix the nightmare that was the Phoenix payroll system? But this week, Canadians were reporting almost instantaneous deposits into their accounts after registering for pandemic-relief benefits. Are we going to expect this kind of speedy service when things back to the old normal?

Everything is better in America: Granted, it can be argued that Canadians were already in the midst of dispelling any remaining illusions about U.S. political superiority, especially since Donald Trump arrived in office in 2016. But a pandemic can really reinforce why it’s good to live in a country with a public health system and a federation capable of working together across party lines when necessary. For evidence of Canadian superiority in pandemic management, one needs only look at the comparison charts between the spread of COVID-19 in the two countries over the past few weeks.

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Virtual engagement: Politics has been incredibly slow to embrace technology that has revolutionized the private sector. It still is rooted in face-to-face encounters, whether in Parliament, voting, town-hall meetings or doorstep conversations. Some of that will return, and the political parties are still arguing about whether to convene a virtual session of the Commons in the days ahead. But some of the online political engagement currently under way may well linger past the pandemic.

Many of the old political rules could swiftly return when we’re back to the “old normal.” It’s hard to imagine, for instance, that the political class can be permanently retrained to be non-partisan or spin-free.

There will always be the temptation to dump the bad news before a long weekend too, in the hopes that its impact will be dulled by a couple of days off. But it’s going to be a while before weekends are anything like the old normal.

Susan Delacourt is a columnist covering national politics based in Ottawa. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt

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