The damage from the ArriveCan debacle is spreading. Once again, the Trudeau government is paying the price. Michael Harris writes:
Apart from the Canadian public, the obvious loser in the ArriveCan scandal is the Trudeau government.
After all, it takes a special kind of incompetence to turn an $80,000 project into a $60-million boondoggle of epic proportions.
Thanking the Auditor General for writing what could be your political epitaph isn’t fooling anyone. Neither is the promise to accept her recommendations. Or protestations that you are committed to handling taxpayers’ money responsibly. In the light of the AG’s findings, that is all nonsense.
But the Liberals are not the only ones paying a price:
There is a second victim in this hot mess: NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. Singh placed a high-stakes bet that his supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals, which would allow the Liberals to remain in place until 2025, would benefit the NDP in the long run.
In return for keeping the government in power, the Liberals pledged to give special attention to the NDP’s policy priorities. And in the case of a public dental care program—or at least the baby steps towards one—that is what happened.
Pharmacare is another matter. The Liberals have already missed one deadline in doing something about this NDP priority.
The new deadline is now March. But the government has already made clear that whatever it might come up with, it will be far short of a single payer, universal program. That, government ministers have said, is far too expensive.
Parsing that response, the Liberals will try to substitute a “framework” for pharmacare, rather than legislation that would actually create it.
Things are falling apart. Governments defeat themselves.
Image: AZ Quotes
