Rex Murphy: Duffy’s a lemon: What are we to do about the economy?
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin TangFormer Conservative Senator Mike Duffy
The Duffy lemon has been thoroughly squeezed and the pips have squeaked their last. It’s been in the media blender so long — 45 days of trial, months and months of saturation media coverage — that there’s now not even a scent, a mist, of juice left. The pulp has been utterly mashed, even the peel riven to its constituent atoms. When the trial does resume in November it will offer more reminiscence than revelation. This lemon is done.
Of what can really be said of this whole exertion I can offer little beyond tautology. What damage it has done, it has done. But to get the political measure of that damage we must await the rest of the campaign.
This long prologue will have exerted some influence on many voters, that influence contingent on partisanship in some cases, on anger in others. Some have found the great tale of Mr. Duffy’s unconquerable neediness, his zeal to siphon every possible expense that the loosest understanding of either ethics or practice gave him dubious cover to claim, has brought them to a higher anger over politics and especially the Senate than they could earlier have imagined.
Image will account for the rest. The Harper people’s scurry around the Duffy affair, their attempt to prod the reluctant senator into doing what they saw as the right thing, and co-incidentally what was of most advantage to them, has elevated the affair to symbolic significance. In consultantspeak Duffyiana has coloured the “brand.” That’s most likely where the damage has been done.
The stock shock brought home that the world is still in a parlous economic situation, that there are forces outside our country than can and do have serious impact on our wellbeing. How the country should conduct itself in these times seems an obvious question that should be receiving far more attention from the leaders, the parties and the press than it has. Then there is the ground-rocketing fall of oil prices, which has left the oil industry in Canada shaking and – something that does not get sufficient highlighting – put in jeopardy the jobs of thousands of Canadians from every province and territory.
The brakes are on. The oil fields are no longer the magnet for employment they have so gloriously been for the past decade or more. Here and abroad, Canadians who have been working in that sector are finding themselves at home, idle, for the first time in a decade. The industry, however unpalatable this is to those who see it as the trip wire to a Green apocalypse, has been a shield for the Canadian economy, a stimulus and a draw to our technological enterprises; it has underwritten tens and hundreds of university disciplines — engineering is the most obvious — and supplied their graduates with employment, giving them the means to rid themselves of the massive debt that now is an almost inescapable concomitant of any post-secondary education.
What’s to fill that great gap? What Nigel Wright knew and when he knew it will not answer that question. Nor will any Jesuitical parsing of the definition of “primary residence.” How many projects that were to begin have been cancelled? How many that were begun have been scaled back or taken out of production? What will be the impact on the Employment Insurance fund? Does the eternal debate on whether to build pipelines now have a different urgency from the days when oil was high and jobs were plentiful?
I think the abeyance of Duffy should mean the beginning of the real campaign – an address by all three leaders on the difficulties the country is in, and can reasonably anticipate it will be in, given the world’s current economic precariousness. This will not have the savour of the cross-examination of the assistant aide to the chief of staff, or another recounting of how much it costs to fly from PEI even when you’re not there to begin with, but it will have more consequence for the nation’s future.
What are your plans for Canada, the whole of it, leaders? That’s where we should start now. The Senate’s not going anywhere – on those days we need the political equivalent of a good beach-read it will always be there.
National Post
Of what can really be said of this whole exertion I can offer little beyond tautology. What damage it has done, it has done. But to get the political measure of that damage we must await the rest of the campaign.
This long prologue will have exerted some influence on many voters, that influence contingent on partisanship in some cases, on anger in others. Some have found the great tale of Mr. Duffy’s unconquerable neediness, his zeal to siphon every possible expense that the loosest understanding of either ethics or practice gave him dubious cover to claim, has brought them to a higher anger over politics and especially the Senate than they could earlier have imagined.
Image will account for the rest. The Harper people’s scurry around the Duffy affair, their attempt to prod the reluctant senator into doing what they saw as the right thing, and co-incidentally what was of most advantage to them, has elevated the affair to symbolic significance. In consultantspeak Duffyiana has coloured the “brand.” That’s most likely where the damage has been done.
What are your plans for Canada, the whole of it, leaders? That’s where we should start now. The Senate’s not going anywhere.That said, perhaps the trial suspension is a cue that it’s time for the caravan to wake the camels and leave the oasis. There are more things in a national election than are dreamt of in the Michael Duffy affair. For example, we had the bruising moments of early this week when the world’s stock markets suffered a fearful syncope, a whiff of panic striking the heart of millions of businesses and investors all over the world. That shock will be with us a while, and is a reminder that while the Duffy trial was flavoured with many delightful glimpses into “the way things work” and sated our innate thirst for high range gossip, these petty delectables do not and can not make up the substance of a national campaign.
The stock shock brought home that the world is still in a parlous economic situation, that there are forces outside our country than can and do have serious impact on our wellbeing. How the country should conduct itself in these times seems an obvious question that should be receiving far more attention from the leaders, the parties and the press than it has. Then there is the ground-rocketing fall of oil prices, which has left the oil industry in Canada shaking and – something that does not get sufficient highlighting – put in jeopardy the jobs of thousands of Canadians from every province and territory.
The brakes are on. The oil fields are no longer the magnet for employment they have so gloriously been for the past decade or more. Here and abroad, Canadians who have been working in that sector are finding themselves at home, idle, for the first time in a decade. The industry, however unpalatable this is to those who see it as the trip wire to a Green apocalypse, has been a shield for the Canadian economy, a stimulus and a draw to our technological enterprises; it has underwritten tens and hundreds of university disciplines — engineering is the most obvious — and supplied their graduates with employment, giving them the means to rid themselves of the massive debt that now is an almost inescapable concomitant of any post-secondary education.
What’s to fill that great gap? What Nigel Wright knew and when he knew it will not answer that question. Nor will any Jesuitical parsing of the definition of “primary residence.” How many projects that were to begin have been cancelled? How many that were begun have been scaled back or taken out of production? What will be the impact on the Employment Insurance fund? Does the eternal debate on whether to build pipelines now have a different urgency from the days when oil was high and jobs were plentiful?
I think the abeyance of Duffy should mean the beginning of the real campaign – an address by all three leaders on the difficulties the country is in, and can reasonably anticipate it will be in, given the world’s current economic precariousness. This will not have the savour of the cross-examination of the assistant aide to the chief of staff, or another recounting of how much it costs to fly from PEI even when you’re not there to begin with, but it will have more consequence for the nation’s future.
What are your plans for Canada, the whole of it, leaders? That’s where we should start now. The Senate’s not going anywhere – on those days we need the political equivalent of a good beach-read it will always be there.
National Post
