The news that Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer was not and never has been an insurance broker has left Canadians, well, broken. If Liberal leader Justin Trudeau had made a similar admission, we would have been equally in pieces.

That nice man Scheer *lied* to us. For some reason, we found his fantasy plausible.

Scheer, 40, who always boasted of once working as an insurance broker, reluctantly admitted to the Globe and Mail that he worked at a Regina insurance office for a few months when he was 24. He had no glam licence to broker or sell insurance. Helping out as what was then colloquially known as a booth babe, he was, he said, “supporting the whole team.”

This is as bad as Canadian political scandal gets. The PM, 47, dressed up as a brownface Aladdin for a costume party 18 years ago, the PM’s office tried to save Quebec jobs at SNC-Lavalin, and the leader of the opposition, now 40, could not have legally sold insurance in Saskatchewan 16 years ago because he hadn’t written the broker exam.

It is not clear to me whether he ever did write it, but if I had been married to Scheer, I’d have said, “Andrew. Write the exam.”

There is nothing wrong with being an insurance broker, one of the helping professions for the average person who detests insurance and everyone who works so hard in the industry to deny your claim and render your policy retroactively pointless from the day you signed the deal and paid them $117 a month for nine years for zilch, nada, nothing.

Trudeau would have been good at it. He’d have recommended an insurance startup that disrupted the industry by making home and auto assessments available to customers at lightning speed at lower cost, a real estate Zillow for the my-garage-burned-down community, an insurance Ikea for the underfurnished.

Scheer, on the other hand, would have advised you that the odds of your garage becoming a steaming heap of tar were dicey, the structure mere tinder and local toddlers a lit match, so best to pay 7.2 per cent over the median rate. His motto: “Sweeten the slumber. Overinsure.”

Scheer did what in real life is known as padding the resumé but in politics is a ticking bomb. He did it for an odd reason: some voters don’t like lifers. They bridle at politicians who never did anything other than endure high pay, free housing and a defined benefit pension plan.

He was hiding the truth, that he spent his adult life in politics, mostly on government pay. Trudeau, on the other hand, thought he wouldn’t. He thought adulthood would be a wild adventure, which it was until he decided to dehumidify and ultimately desiccate his life by running for MP in Papineau.

That’s pure Scheer, trying to pass himself off as a Westerner even though he was born and raised in Ottawa and will spend his adult life there. He is dullness incarnate, surrounded by men who are less dull and more vicious about Canada’s history of liberal tendency.

Of course we are being played here. A history of rebel insurance sales distracts from Scheer’s links to Ezra Levant’s notorious Rebel Media. Scheer played with fire. It was called insurance.

Here’s the most damning thing I can say about Scheer.

People with a purpose — a point of view, something to sell, a quest for votes — sit down with the Star’s editorial board, meaning they enter the building and talk to a group of journalists personally. Companies like Airbnb and Uber, whose effect has been deplorable, do this because it works. Nothing is better at persuading people than actual human contact. Politicians do this and livestream the event.

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

I often attend and take careful notes but really, the effect is more impressionistic. Scheer visited the Star recently. I was off work that day but would have come in, had a man who hopes to be prime minister not been competing for the much-coveted Canada’s Most Boring Man award. I couldn’t be troubled.

We thought there was briefly a fly in Scheer’s soup, possibly doing the backstroke. It was a consommé. There was not.

Read more about: