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Did you see that small story in Tuesday’s Post where 85,000 people in Italy applied for 30 bank jobs? Every now and again reality sticks a hard pokey bit through the saccharine make-believe blanket of politics.

The story wouldn’t amount to much if the 30 jobs had been, say, for executive vice-president with a huge salary and lavish perks. But they weren’t. They pay 28,000 euros a year to do things like feed banknotes into machines that detect fake or worn out bills. Now 8,000 “short-list” candidates, all with solid academic credentials, are going to take a gruelling exam in the hope of starting work in 2018.

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Why? Because Italy’s youth unemployment rate is nearly 40 per cent. That, dear readers, is reality.

Now for the make-believe. The European Union is a glowing success. Government is not too big, intrusive or stifling in the Western world. Brexit was the work of sausage-fingered yahoos.

Photo by Gino Donato/Postmedia Network/File

To some extent we are very fortunate in Canada, including in our scope for engaging in virtue-signaling rather than problem-solving public policy. Our geographical situation, far from trouble and close to the United States, our heritage of liberty and our hard-working, imaginative people give us more room for policy error than many nations enjoy. And we make full use of it. For instance by electing Justin Trudeau and re-electing Kathleen Wynne.