It sounds like a conversation about tax policy, but don’t be fooled by the current political debate over taxes in Canada.

What we’re actually hearing is a morality tale — a struggle between the unworthy haves and the ripped-off have-nots. It may not be long before calling someone ‘wealthy’ joins the list of unparliamentary insults in the Commons.

The revelations coming out of the so-called Paradise Papers about offshore tax shelters are the latest instalment in this story, but they join up with what political communications professionals like to call a “narrative.” The now-familiar refrain against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals is that they are wealthy, out-of-touch elites, using their power to make themselves and their friends richer.

Have Trudeau and the Liberals brought some of this on themselves? Certainly, if you think that the prime minister should have avoided doing $1,000-a-person fundraisers or taking holidays on private islands.

But it’s still worth noting how questions in the Commons are being increasingly framed around character flaws rather than political actions or policy disagreements. In other words, it’s not what Trudeau does that’s whipping up his critics. It’s who he is — and who he hangs around with.

In the Commons on Tuesday, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer was still hammering away at Trudeau’s “rich, well-connected friends,” saying that people with a “jet-set life” were far removed from those with a “road-trip life.” (Rock bands?)

The Conservative finance critic, Pierre Poilievre, said that Trudeau’s problems were “generational” and somehow managed to use his questions to remind people of former Prime Minister Paul Martin and his shipping business.

I’ve been wondering how much this anti-wealth rhetoric of 2017 resonates with the Canadian public. It’s definitely true that no Canadian political party wants to be seen as aligned with the wealthy and powerful. Trudeau, despite the company he seems to keep, often talks about how he wants to crack down on the wealthy one per cent in Canada.

Similarly, all of the main parties seem to see themselves as champions of those earning average or less-than-average incomes. In 2017, everyone’s a populist.

Anderson said that Canadians are generally less wealth-obsessed than Americans. That does seem very Canadian — a very middle-of-the-road attitude. Anderson said that Canadians are generally less wealth-obsessed than Americans. That does seem very Canadian — a very middle-of-the-road attitude.

Earlier this week, Abacus Data released some poll findings on the three main party leaders: Trudeau, Scheer and the new NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh.

None of the questions dealt specifically with the wealth of these three men (or lack of it) but the poll did ask respondents how well these political leaders understood “people like you.” (It’s sort of like that old question about which politicians voters would most like to have a beer with.)

The good news, for all three leaders, is that roughly two-thirds of respondents felt that Scheer, Trudeau and Singh understood them, either very well or somewhat well. In fact, when you look at the overall positive responses to this question, Trudeau ranks last — 68 per cent of people said Scheer understood them either somewhat or very well; 64 per cent said the same for Singh and 61 per cent for Trudeau.

However, the prime minister scored far and away ahead of his rivals among those who said they were “very well” understood by their political leaders — 36 per cent for Trudeau, compared to 21 per cent for Scheer and just 16 per cent for Singh.

I asked Abacus’s pollsters — David Coletto and Bruce Anderson — whether they had any recent numbers on what looks like the rising unpopularity of ‘wealth’ as a personal attribute in politics. They didn’t have any results from the past few months of this class warfare, but they could point to some findings over the past year.

In April, Abacus asked people whether they would agree with this statement: “The power of a few special interests prevents our country from making progress.” A whopping 74 per cent agreed, though the loose wording of the statement would seem to encompass a wide variety of ‘special interests’, not just the wealthy. (Conservatives, one assumes, would see ‘special interests’ differently than New Democrats would.)

Abacus also asked people about a year ago what they were seeking in a political leader. Wealth and pedigree were way, way down on the list. In fact, it was the last thing on the list, with only 6 per cent of respondents saying a political leader should come from “an accomplished family.”

Then again, only 8 per cent said they wanted political leaders to come from a less affluent background, which may mean (happily) that Canadians are less concerned with how or where political leaders grew up.

“It’s about character, values and priorities,” Anderson and Coletto said.

Anderson said that Canadians are generally less wealth-obsessed than Americans. “My guess, based on listening to people discuss wealth in focus groups over the years is that we neither idolize those of wealth the way many Americans do … or abhor them/blame them as some on the left edge of the political spectrum do,” he said.

That does seem very Canadian — a very middle-of-the-road attitude toward wealth.

But Canadian politics is starting to sound a lot like a page from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story — no, not The Great Gatsby, but a lesser-known work called The Rich Boy.

It starts with these words: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”

That difference, whether one believes it or not, is emerging as the main wedge in Canadian politics in the fall of 2017.

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