OK, here’s a little secret from “one of them,” someone who writes for many of Canada’s major publications and appears regularly on television and radio. The political and media class are obsessed with SNC-Lavalin and its various sub-stories to a ridiculous degree. They take extraordinary joy in adopting sides on the issue and attributing hero and villain status when, in fact, nobody comes out of this lukewarm mess particularly well.

For most (or even all) Ottawa journalists and politicians, this is the most exciting thing that has ever happened in their professional lives. Let’s be candid here: the Canadian political scene is bland, which is actually rather a good thing because it means we’re relatively well governed, moderate and operate within a comfortable consensus.

There, I’ve said it. While the emperor might not be totally naked, the clothes are not new and not very exciting. And I will now be accused of being a Liberal shill, funded by George Soros to defend Justin Trudeau and to prop up the most sinister government in history. Or other, similar and abusive hyperbole.

The truth is that I voted NDP last election, likely will again, but am not a party person and believe that the issues I care most about — climate change, justice for Indigenous people, economic equality, health care, peace — require a transformation rather than mere tampering. But this won’t matter as I’m shouted down as someone who refuses to be perennially aroused by issues that, truth be told, matter hardly a jot to most Canadians.

I could argue that while all of this has been going on, the Ontario government has repeatedly humiliated parents of autistic children, causing stress and hardship we can’t even imagine; or that the same administration has withdrawn support for supervised injection sites, which will lead to people dying; or that the latest environmental reports show that we are doomed unless we take drastic action. None of this has received the attention it deserves because of the tumescence over Ottawa antics from those who shape the public conversation.

That, however, will lead to accusations of “whataboutism.” Coren is writing and saying this because he wants to digress and distract from what the Trudeau regime is doing, and so on. Not really. Simply juxtaposing what in the news is being covered constantly with that being given limited exposure when it arguably matters a great deal more.

There are, of course, some significant themes around SNC-Lavalin, but they go far beyond Liberal Party personalities and the various spin machines. It’s about power and the influence of major businesses. Which is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to take the Conservatives and their friends in high and influential places at all seriously when they try to claim the moral high ground. The truth is that they’re so intimate with corporate wealth and so committed to an economic and social system than would embolden and not limit non-parliamentary influence that their contrived anger is acutely hypocritical.

The legion of “consultants” and the like who rush to defend the Liberal party are not much better. How wonderful and startling it would be if one of them said, “Yeah, we really screwed this one up. It’s not very different from how most governments have behaved, but it’s still not right. We’re really sorry. Women and First Nations would be treated far more poorly under a Conservative government, but we still blew it on this one. Mea culpa.”

But that’s not going to happen. Party politics has become an end in itself, not a means to making Canada a better place. It’s like some sort of enormous fishing net, with each side lifted arrogantly high by the two major parties, and the people thrashing around in the bottom.

What I genuinely fear is the dichotomy this has revealed between the mass of the country and the few who feel entitled to tell them how and what to think. Most of the scandal will be forgotten eventually, even though I am sure various books are being commissioned at this very moment, but the systemic problems and challenges will not have been addressed one bit. That, if we’re honest, is the real tragedy.

Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and frequent contributor to the Star’s Opinion section and iPolitics. Follow him on Twitter: @michaelcoren

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