POILIEVRE: What’s The Big Secret? DOUCET

By Clive Doucet

The older I get, the less I seem to understand which lamentably is a normal result of the aging process.

The more depressing thought is that it is not me but the world is becoming less understandable. It’s hard not to think this way when ideas that used to be taken for granted such as the good of vaccines are a blessing, not a curse, have crumbled. The incomprehensible part of this change is no one seems to know why it has happened because there is no evidence to support this switch in public opinion, but it has happened.

The most recent nonsense is that low tariffs combined with globalization, have made the average American poorer. U.S. poverty has nothing to do with globalization and everything to do with the distribution of the immense wealth created by globalization. It’s all going in one direction, upwards.

You would think the solution would be obvious. Rethink how wealth is distributed so that government taxing and spending becomes more equitable … for example everyone gets a family doctor. But no, not at all.

The solution proposed is to kill world trade with high tariffs and use the income these tariffs produce to increase inequity by using tariffs to lower taxes for the richest. In my old and befuddled mind, I can’t imagine anything more wrong-headed. It will create more inequity in earnings, more inequity in the taxes, higher prices at the checkout and reduce world trade, which will reduce wealth overall.

I have the same utter incomprehensibility around Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s refusal to submit to an RCMP security clearance. However, I do understand why Poilievre doesn’t want to attend in-camera meetings given by the prime minister.

As an Ottawa city councillor, I did exactly the same thing when I realized the participants were using the secrecy required for in-camera meetings as a method of misleading Ottawa City Council and pushing through destructive transit proposals. I grew to hate in-camera meetings because the secrecy required forced me to keep my doubts to myself in the public forum.

So, good for you Pierre Poilievre, if you suspect a federal version of this is happening with the prime minister’s secret meetings, do stay away from them. The thing I don’t understand is why you don’t get a security clearance? A security clearance (which I had) didn’t mean I was required to attend the mayor’s meetings. Nor will a security clearance oblige you to attend the prime minister’s secret meetings, but it does mean if you want to, you can.

It is conceivable that an occasion might arise where you will wish to change your mind and attend an in camera meeting, but without a security clearance you can’t attend. Why would any leader put himself or herself in such a weak position? It was my choice not to attend the mayor’s in camera meetings, not the mayor’s. Plus, inevitably, without a security clearance, a certain suspicion does arise. So, where’s the downside here?

A security clearance is not rocket science. A police officer talks to your friends, work colleagues, your relatives and asks a few simple questions. Basically, are you as advertised? No gambling, sex or drug problems? No conflict-of-interest investments. No mafia buddies. You reply no to all of the above and that’s it. I never gave it two seconds thought, so why are you?

Clive Doucet is a former Ottawa City Councillor, poet and author. His last book was Grandfather’s House: Returning to Cape Breton.

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