On his official itinerary for last weekend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was said to be having “personal” time in Ottawa.

Social media, however, told a slightly different story. In photos circulating on Facebook and Instagram, Trudeau is shown spending part of last Saturday at a Liberal Party of Canada national executive meeting.

It looks like a quick, drop-in affair — the prime minister, clad in a black quilted jacket, is seated around a large conference table, talking to his loyal troops. So, does this really qualify as “personal” time?

Stephen Harper used to do these stealth-type visits as well when Conservatives were meeting in Ottawa, presumably also to ensure that the media wasn’t there to see the former prime minister fraternizing with partisans.

What’s with all the secrecy? Somehow, we seem to have decided that leaders’ partisan activities fall outside the otherwise wide-open boundaries of being a public person in the digital age.

Well, to a point. What was odd about Trudeau’s sort-of-private meeting is that it came on the same weekend as a press release from his own Liberal party — taunting other leaders for being less open about partisan events.

The Liberals pointed out — accurately — that they now regularly alert the media about fundraising events that Trudeau is attending, while the opposition parties do not.

“Both the Conservatives and NDP have continued to organize their fundraising events in secret — keeping journalists out and hiding details from Canadians about who is attending their closed-door events,” Azam Ishmael, the Liberals’ national director, is quoted as saying in the news release.

“Canadians expect our political leaders to meet the highest standards for openness and transparency. The start of their first full year as party leaders is a great time for (Conservative Leader) Andrew Scheer and (NDP Leader) Jagmeet Singh to do the right thing and bring their secret fundraising events out into the open.”

Singh, for his part, was practising openness on a whole new level about his personal life this past week, taking the media with him to the restaurant where he presented a ring and marriage proposal to Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh surprised his clothing designer girlfriend Gurkiran Kaur with a proposal Tuesday night in Toronto. Several members of the media were invited to witness the engagement. (The Canadian Press)

It took place at a vegetarian restaurant in Toronto where the couple reportedly had their first date. Here’s how The Canadian Press described the magical moment.

“Along with friends and family, Singh invited several members of the media, including The Canadian Press, to witness the surprise proposal Tuesday night. Friends cheered as Singh and Sidhu arrived. Singh pulled a ring out of his jacket pocket and got down on one knee to propose to Sidhu, who accepted.”

So, to recap, no openness from the NDP about fundraisers, or so the Liberals allege, but open access to the leader’s marriage proposals. The NDP isn’t alone in making the personal political — Conservatives and Liberals have often used a leader’s life events — Mother’s Day or the birth of a child, in Trudeau’s case — to gather up digital contact information from Canadians.

We’re at a strange juncture surrounding this whole business of what’s public and what’s private in Canadian politics. We don’t have our leaders releasing details of their medical checkups, as Donald Trump did this week (some say fictitiously). Nor does the media seem inclined to intrude on the prime minister’s time if it’s deemed to be “personal.” (Unless it’s a Christmas vacation on the Aga Khan’s island.)

The standards and rules are clearly in flux, based entirely on the whim of the moment. We aren’t yet entirely clear on whether political parties are public or private entities — not just when it comes to our own curiosity, but also in the eyes of the law.

Several years ago, the man who is now the prime minister’s principal adviser, Gerald Butts, said he was leaning toward the idea that parties should be totally public.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

At a digital governance conference in early 2015, Butts told the audience: “Let’s not kid ourselves, political parties are public institutions of a sort. They are granted within national or sub-national legislation special status on a whole variety of fronts, whether they be the charitable deduction, the exemption from access to information — all those sorts of things.”

Back then, Butts wasn’t sure it was a good thing for political parties to try to be simultaneously public and private. “I think that is increasingly a problem and it is difficult for me to envision a future where it exists for much longer,” he said.

Three years since those words were uttered, that private-public distinction seems even more murky — especially after a week in which an engagement party was wide open to the public while a party board meeting was declared to be “personal” time for the prime minister. “Party” is obviously a flexible concept when it comes to political transparency in Canada right now.

sdelacourt@bell.net

Read more about: