What I missed

Posted by cwaddell under All, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Christopher Waddell

Having been out of the country for a week where news about all the important political things happening in Canada is hard to find, here are a couple of observations.

Is there so little for the House of Commons to do that a committee really spent its time investigating the employer-employee relationship between an MP and caregivers hired to work for her family, including having the caregivers testify? I had thought Parliament couldn’t be more irrelevant than a committee investigating who should be the captain of Team Canada at the world hockey championships but I guess I was wrong.  I’d hold off though for a while though on those stories about more and more people don’t vote and why it is so hard to persuade good people to give up interesting careers to enter politics to help improve public policy. The answer is a little too self-evident at the moment.

With the media staggered by a collapse in advertising due to the recession, why is so much media attention being devoted to the Conservatives launching an advertising campaign against Michael Ignatieff, including all the details of the campaign and the ads? Wouldn’t it be smarter and certainly more financially rewarding to force the Conservatives to buy ads?

Finally there is a very good review by Ron Graham of Ignatieff’s book True Patriot Love in the latest Literary Review of Canada. Although he has written widely on a range of subjects, to those in politics Graham is best known as the writer of Jean Chretien’s two books, Straight from the Heart and My Years as Prime Minister.