The Conservatives are pitching Andrew Scheer as a Canadian Everyman. Alan Freeman writes:
The Globe and Mail’s fawning profile of Andrew Scheer starts with a bit of a fib. It contrasts the laid-back security approach at Stornoway, the official home of the opposition leader, to the “sprawling and regal” residence of the Prime Minister at 24 Sussex Drive.
The anecdote is to convey the idea, much beloved of Conservative Party spin-masters, that Andrew Scheer is “everyman” compared to the Trudeau princeling who’s the current prime minister.
But these days, Trudeau doesn't live at 24 Sussex Drive. And the idea that Scheer is an everyman is a carefully manufactured myth:
Like all myths, Andrew Scheer as the “Canadian everyman of 2019” is essentially a lie. Ordinary Andrew is a one per center. His salary of $264,400 a year as leader of the opposition puts him into the top one per cent of Canadian tax filers, according to Statistics Canada.
His first real job—aside from brief stints as a waiter, insurance broker and political aide—was a $141,000-a-year job as a 25-year-old MP. He’s lived off the public teat in grand style ever since.
At the age of 32, he became the youngest ever Speaker of the House of Commons and moved into the Farm, the lovely rural residence of the House Speaker in the Gatineau Hills north of the city.
Who else but a one per center with essentially free housing could afford to have a stay-at-home spouse and five children? Not the real “Canadian everyman of 2019,” who’s likely living in a one-bedroom condo in downtown Toronto or Vancouver wondering if and when he and his working spouse can ever afford one child, let alone five. (The average Canadian family now has 1.56 children and there at last report there were only 493,000 families in Canada with a single earner and stay-at-home parent, a third the number in 1976.)
Yet the Conservative Party has the nerve to state that “Andrew knows the joys and challenges of raising a growing family in Canada today.” Really?
To gild the “everyman” lily, Scheer harkens back to his Abe Lincoln log-cabin story, only this time it’s a townhouse in suburban Ottawa, where his family made do without a car. “We had to take the bus everywhere we went.” The horrors. In fact, his parents were solidly middle-class, his father a librarian at The Ottawa Citizen and his mother a nurse.
It's the same kind of balderdash which was behind the notion that Donald Trump was The Master of The Deal.
Canadians should know when they're being conned.
Image: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
10 comments:
You are a braver man than I. I couldn't get very far with that drive before clicking away.
This election is a tough one, rumley. I see very little that I like.
Another situational rugged individualist at the top of his profession (whatever that is). More nerve than Dick Tracy. At least Justin doesn't have the gall to try selling himself as one of us.
.. it now seems Andrew Scheer never had a licence to sell life insurance.. so did he or didn't he sell insurance ? Pick your poison. Operated and sold without a licence.. or its pure myth.. kind of like Melania Trump's pretend University degree.. after semi attending for 1 year.. with her high IQ. Scheer is a career political animal .. just like Jason Kenney, just like Stephen Harper.. mebbe I'll glance through the Globe fluff.. mebbe not.
As I've mentioned here and there.. I found him and the so called 'conservative' party insulting to Canada, Canadians and our Canadian Environment yesterday.. they went on strike all right.. choosing not to suppurt young and old who took public trans to attend and show support for our climate.. c'est la vie.. and as many may say.. showed their snide true colours there.. and how cheap their talk is.. or as an Albertan might say 'all hat, no cattle'
Free housing and being an icon for the Peter Principle as Speaker of the House will make you rich.
As I pointed out somehere or other on the progblogisphere a week ago, Scheer is apparently worth $3 million. And JT is worth $12 million.
Neither is much like everyman. Both have worked at nothing in particular, although by pecuniary necessity, Scheer for once concentrated his brainpower and worked out that being a pol paid well, about a decade before JT breathlessly appeared to save us all. Being generally genial didn't make enemies for Scheer, he's probably friends with many Con MPs.
Quite why the Globe should be so happy with Scheer is beyond me. Perhaps the management have decided they are masters of ethics, and decided Justin's sins exceed in gravity those of Scheer being a homophobe, and really quite unable to explain himself on say, the east-west energy corridor. Repeating your first answer word-for-word to a different follow-up question suggests both a lack of knowledge on the subject and low mental agility. And he was ticked off at being caught out. The obstinacy of his persona never seems to have been noted. In power, I would expect him to be selfly-informed dogmatic with no imagination whatsoever. Just what we need, a Conservative numb-brain in charge.
BM
For all his faults, John, Justin publicly recognizes that he's a child of privilege. Scheer is something -- or someone -- else.
Precisely, sal. All hat and no cattle.
Thanks for the update on Scheer lunacy!
The Conservative line on Trudeau is "not as advertised," Mac. Seems to me it describes their own guy pretty well.
Scheer has memorized the Conservative talking points, BM. The party believes -- with some historical evidence -- that, if he repeats those points enough, people will believe him.
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