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Open treason hasn’t quite caught on yet in Canada. Sure, we all remember the Honking Man festival held three years ago in the nation’s capital, but the coup-lite attempt was mostly just a bunch of disgruntled anti-vaxxers with too much time on their hands and access to enormous vehicles, not elected officials or lawmakers who’d sworn an oath to the country.
Selling out your country is still considered a Very Bad Thing north of the border, like it is in most countries without Fox News, and there’s never been anything close to a “Russia, if you’re listening” moment, let alone any of the normalized ratfuckery that’s gone down in the eight years since.
But the word “treason” is being tossed around a lot now in Ottawa after the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), a cross-party group of MPs and senators with top security clearances, released its heavily redacted report into foreign interference earlier this month and confirmed an unspecified number of their colleagues were “semi-witting or witting participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics.”
Parliament Hill has since become the pointy-finger Spider-Man meme as politicos scramble to say “I know you are but what am I?”
One of the first things they teach in journalism school is that news stories should contain the Five Ws: Who, What, Where, When and Why. At this point all we’ve got is the fifth one with unknown bad actors getting some quid pro quo for advancing a foreign power’s geopolitical agenda.
Was it a Laurentian elite in the library with a leadpipe? A clueless Tory in the bouncy castle with a revolver? Were any gold bars handed over in exchange for services rendered or luxury cars purchased for anyone’s spouses?
We don’t even know which specific parties may have benefitted from a little cloak-and-dagger action or what nations did the meddling, although suspicion immediately fell on China and India, who have two of the largest immigrant diasporas in the country and both have a history of giving zero fucks when it comes to respecting Canadian sovereignty, particularly under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
China locked up a couple of Canadian citizens — Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, known as the Two Michaels — for years on trumped-up espionage charges in retaliation for Canada arresting tech mandarin Meng Wanzhou at the DOJ’s request for fraud at the Vancouver airport in 2018, while India allegedly took a page from Prince Bonesaw’s playbook last year and allegedly wacked Hardeep Singh Nijja, a Sikh activist and Canadian citizen, just a few dozen miles away in Surrey.
Game recognizes game, so you’d think iron-fisted authoritarians like Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi would lean towards having Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in charge but so far the only politician to fall on their sword over foreign interference allegations is former Liberal MP Han Dong, who now sits as an Independent and has enough on his plate right now without us piling on with dick jokes about his name.
Trudeau recently appeared on CBC’s “Power & Politics” to say there’s no need to name names over any spy games and nothing for Canadians to panic about:
“I think everyone understands that when you talk about issues of national security, disclosing classified information puts the people who collected that information at risk, puts knowledge of how we protect Canadians in the hands of those people who want to harm Canadians. There’s always, when [it] comes to national security, a need to balance what we can say publicly with what we actually do to keep Canadians safe… But we have never shied away from transparency.”
Trudeau is saying it’s all basically a big nothingburger, albeit one with a dash of exotic condiments. Or what George Bluth Sr. might call just “light treason.”
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, whose godless commie party is currently propping up the minority Liberal government, disagrees and said “this behavior absolutely appears to be criminal and should be prosecuted’’ after reading the uncensored report.
Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who should know if anyone tried to influence her party since it’s pretty much just her and some other guy, also said it’s not a super big deal. May said she was “relieved” after reading it, and the contents are “not as bad as a John le Carré novel but a bit more worrying than Miss Marple.” May may regret going with an old Agatha Christie character for the analogy rather than more current fictional homegrown mystery-solvers such as Detective Murdoch or Inspector Gamarche though, but I digress.
Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet hasn’t read the report yet himself and says he’s in the process of doing the necessary paperwork for the security clearance. Which frankly seems a bit of a longshot given his party’s whole raison d’être is noping out of Canada and establishing Quebec as its own sovereign state.
And what of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, you ask? He hasn’t read it either because he refuses to undergo the required security screening.
Yes, you read that correctly. The man who polls — not to mention his party’s byelection landslide win last week in a former Liberal stronghold — suggest will be the next prime minister doesn’t want to submit to a background check.
Speculation abounds! One of the main requirements is listing all sources of employment over the past 10 years, and we already know exactly where this guy was. The same place the 45-year-old has been for the past 20 years: sitting and sniping in the House of Commons. (Fun fact: Poilievre’s political debut came after winning a national “If I Was Prime Minister…” essay contest as a college student where he argued Parliamentarians should have strict two-term limits, a core belief he shed as readily as he did his signature Milhouse glasses in his recent makeover after becoming Tory leader.) The only obvious major life change for him during this time period was marrying a Venezuelan and starting a family so it’s possible the ghost of Hugo Chavez is involved.
(A note on pronunciation: There’s a fair bit of confusion on how to say Pierre Poilievre’s last name. His Wikipedia page helpfully offers PAW-lee-EV as close enough for government work since most unilingual English speakers can’t properly roll their Rs, although the general consensus seems to be Polly Ever instead. Maybe Polly Never will become a thing. It’s an uncommon French surname though, and I’d be remiss to not share “poil” is a word for hair and “lièvre” means hare. Herr Harehair may seem less scary if you think of him as Peter Rabbit Fur.)
Although an even better nickname might be Peewee Hareman™ even though he doesn’t share the late Paul Reuben’s enthusiasm for watching porn.
Many are wondering about Jared Kushner-level skeletons in the hare heir apparent’s closet or if he’d been told to say no — or maybe nyet or bù — by shady foreign handlers but a more likely explanation is he simply doesn’t want to know the facts because it’s easier to lie and smear his opponents without them.
Surely the reaction from the other party leaders would’ve been a bit more hair-on-fire if the allegations were all specifically about the Conservatives, and it’s hard to imagine Peepee has a pee tape of his own.
But whatever the harm done by hostile foreign nations, it pales in comparison to the damage to the Canadian psyche inflicted last week by a gang of bearded Florida men.
No Canadian NHL team has won the Stanley Cup in 31 years, and the Edmonton Oilers came heartbreakingly short of becoming only the second team in the league’s history to come back from an 0-3 deficit to win the final, losing Game 7 to the Florida Panthers 2-1.
I don’t know if there’s an equivalent but imagine if other countries played gridiron football — as opposed to the more affordable game the rest of the planet correctly refers to as football — and no US team had won the Super Bowl in more than three decades. And they also ditched the halftime show just to rub it in.
The pain is real and, adding insult to injury, the Oil didn’t even lose to a respectable Original Six team like the Rangers or Red Wings but to frickin Florida. FLORIDA!! Specifically Miami, where ice is mostly associated with margaritas, jackbooted border thugs or Dexter’s temporary hiding spots for victims rather than the best game you can name.
And during Pride Month, no less. It’s awful to think of Governor Ron DeSantis getting his greasy pudding fingers on Lord Stanley’s mug, and hopefully he won’t scratch the name Brian Burke from it if given the chance.
Burke is an old-school hockey tough guy straight out of central casting who became a vocal ally of the LGBTQ+ community after his son Brendan came out, and has remained one 14 years after Brendan died in a car crash, helping to spearhead the You Can Play campaign meant to end homophobia in pro sports. He won the trophy in 2007 as general manager of the Anaheim Ducks, and DeSantis would probably want to remove the names of the entire roster since the team was originally named after a Disney movie.
We should expect author David J. Clark’s childrens’ book about the team formerly known as the Mighty Ducks to be banned from public school libraries any moment. Despite the absence of any NHLers out of the closet.
[CBC / The Tyee / You Can Play]
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