What with blackface, photo-shopped coffee cups and free camping trips, voters this election could be forgiven if they opt for the Rhinoceros Party

At a Conservative campaign rally the other evening, local candidate Krystina Waler talked about her goal for her riding: “To make St. Catharines the best place to live, work and raise a family.”

That seemed to me to be a pretty good encapsulation of what governments should aim to do – lay solid foundations upon which citizens can build fulfilling lives.

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Frequently though, governments overreach, spreading their tentacles too far into the lives of their citizens, wasting their money in the process. The impossibly optimistic Ugandan space program under Idi Amin comes to mind – ranked by Time Magazine as one of the “100 worst ideas of the 20th century”.

Not to be outdone in the stupidity stakes, the Liberals have come up with a Canadian contender for the 21st century. Justin Trudeau made land in a canoe in Sudbury, Ont., after paddling round a lake for the cameras, to announce a re-elected Liberal government will create $2,000 travel bursaries to send 75,000 families camping for up to four days in a national or provincial park.

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The program – officially, “A Camping Experience for Every Kid in Canada” – sounds like a dodgy holiday scam but it’s all too real and will add another $150 million to the deficit when fully implemented.

The derision that greeted the announcement provoked an outbreak of “whataboutery” from the type of people who think the SNC-Lavalin scandal was just a failure to communicate on the part of the prime minister. “What about those Conservative arts and sports tax credits?” To which the obvious answer is, they’re stupid too. Why should taxpayers subsidize piano lessons for kids whose parents can, for the most part, well afford them?

But handing over public money to fund camping holidays for low-income and new Canadian families takes nannyism to heights not even the Trudeau Liberals have reached hitherto.

The NDP was quick to leap on Trudeau bankrolling his pet project by pointing out that low income Canadians would probably much prefer the government help them pay their rent – the New Democrats have a subsidy program that would give up to $5,000 a year to 500,000 families.

If the first objection to this improvidence is that governments shouldn’t be paying for people to go on vacation, the second is that almost every alternative use for those dollars is more appropriate than the Experience Canada program.

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Photo by John Lappa/Sudbury Star/Postmedia

Trudeau can’t see that, of course. He likes camping, so thinks that everyone should be coerced to camp. Recall, if you will, his insistence that Indigenous young people didn’t need youth centres – what they really wanted was “a place to store their canoes and paddles”. Romeo Saganash, the former NDP MP, lampooned the comment, calling for a national canoe and paddle program, before stating the obvious – what young people on reserve really want is adequate housing and a decent education.

This is Trudeau’s peculiar cotton wool culture at its most bloated – unless, that is, a re-elected Liberal government resolves new Canadians be mandated to attend lakeside workers’ resorts to appreciate the rocks and trees.

What with blackface, photo-shopped coffee cups and free camping trips, voters in this election could be forgiven if they opt for the Rhinoceros Party, with its plan to make “sorry” the official motto of Canada, nationalize bacon and force manufacturers to build more green cars (including forest green, pale green and khaki green).

Alternatively, the mainstream parties could try to restore confidence in their capacity to provide competent public administration, without offering bribes and waving shiny objects.

That means an end to assurances of chicken in every pot, an end to pledges of ponies in every home and, most of all, an end to promises of free bloody holidays.