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Was Wernick intending to suggest that some sort of Russian brain gas had been dispersed in the ventilation system at Globe and Mail headquarters?

He sees nothing improper in any of this, but he also, perhaps sensing possible weaknesses in this position, proposes that the former attorney general ought to have consulted the ethics commissioner if she felt there was a problem. Well, his call to Wilson-Raybould took place on Dec. 19: she was bounced 26 days later, with official Ottawa still hibernating. So this is certainly information worth having as we discuss her fate, the prime minister’s subsequent reassuring boast that her continued presence at Veterans Affairs “spoke for itself,” and her immediate resignation from cabinet.

We can only be grateful that the head of the civil service found time to mention these salient timeline points after he had completed an uninvited philippic on the contemporary state of Canadian politics. “I am deeply concerned about my country right now, and its politics, and where it’s headed,” he bawled. “I worry about foreign interference in the upcoming election and we’re working hard on that.” Was Wernick intending to suggest that some sort of Russian brain gas had been dispersed in the ventilation system at Globe and Mail headquarters? Tempted though I am to believe it, I do not see how his apparent hypothesis was pertinent to the purpose of his appearance, except as a self-evident attempt at distraction.

Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

But he went on. Oh, did he. He complained that protesters are often using words like “treason” and “traitor” to characterize the current government, calling these “words that lead to assassination” and moaning that “somebody is going to be shot” during the upcoming federal campaign. One can only wonder what cave Mr. Wernick was occupying at the time of the 1988 general election on free trade, or whether he has ever read any of the words written on the posters of climate protesters. I myself found last week’s Alberta-to-Ottawa truck convoy protest sort of ridiculous, but now, having been presented with evidence that it has plunged Canadian establishment lifers into a state of bug-eyed pantomime horror, I suppose there might be something to the tactic after all.