Travel troubles across political spectrum

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/01/2021 (1898 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As of this writing, #Travelgate continues to lay waste to Canada’s federal and provincial political landscape, leaving corpses of once-promising political careers behind it.

“Travelgate” is the word I’m using to describe the ongoing scandal involving politicians who strongly discouraged Canadians from any sort of travel during the holiday season due to COVID-19, only to themselves board flights to sunnier locales. The result has been a spectacle in which some journalists have waited by international baggage claims to catch elected officials with suspicious tans collecting their luggage while returning to our frozen, peaceable kingdom.

Canadians have rightly latched on to the scandal as an example of elite hypocrisy: politicians lecturing Canadians to follow the rules while outright flouting them.

This was all started by Ontario’s former finance minister, Rod Phillips, who flew off to St. Bart’s — a place I’m apparently not wealthy enough to have even known about until last week — over the holiday, only to be summoned home by Premier Doug Ford once the trip was made public. After a prolonged apology to journalists camped out at Pearson Airport, Phillips promptly resigned.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney tried to get ahead of the scandal when it became clear that what seemed like half his United Conservative Party caucus was out holidaying abroad over December. Both a minister and Kenney’s chief of staff resigned over their international travel. MLAs sheepishly returned to Alberta following Kenney’s press conference, but one who was particularly committed to relaxing over the holiday couldn’t even be contacted.

Manitoba hasn’t escaped Travelgate’s harsh backlash. NDP MP Niki Ashton travelled to Greece to visit her ailing grandmother; leader Jagmeet Singh stripped her of her critic responsibilities as a result. Tory MLA James Teitsma took his family on a road trip through the decidedly less exotic locale of Saskatchewan. David McLaughlin, Manitoba’s top civil servant and the Tories’ former campaign manager, travelled back to Ottawa to spend time with his family. Premier Brian Pallister has indicated neither Teitsma nor McLaughlin will be sanctioned for their travel.

Obviously, Canadians are justified in being outraged by many politicians’ selective application of travel rules. This outrage is aggravated by two considerations: first is the severity of the pandemic which, due to the arrival of a new more infectious variant of COVID-19 in Canada thanks to international travellers, may well get worse before provincial governments can vaccinate enough Canadians; second, Canadians already have a fairly low view of governments and elected officials, and so scandals such as this reinforce cynicism in Canadian politics.

There is some evidence that Canadians’ view of government was improving as a result of the COVID-19 response. One wonders whether these most recent revelations will have dashed that.

On the other hand, there is some room for sympathy in these cases. There is a difference between taking off during the holiday to get some sun and travelling for family reasons. In the former category, MP Ron Liepert travelled to a place called Palm Desert, Calif., in the middle of the Canadian December, only to claim his travel was “essential.” In the latter: Ashton flew to Greece and was allowed into the country based on her “urgent family situation,” her grandmother’s failing health. Ashton, in my view, deserves some sympathy; Liepert deserves none.

The easiest response to this argument is that Canadians have been deprived of time with their families as a result of lockdown rules, so why should politicians be able to meet with their families? Many Canadians went through the entire holiday without the company of family and loved ones. Kids didn’t see their grandparents. For many, this will be the loneliest Christmas they will have ever experienced.

The news that politicians have flouted the rules they’ve imposed on regular Canadians feels like salt ground into these fresh wounds.

I agree entirely. I wish there was a way to create exceptions to these lockdown laws for family reasons. And in addition to the drumbeat of news about how the lockdowns have harmed businesses and how governments should move to support them, I wish there was greater attention paid to how the lockdowns have hurt families and robbed us of the human contact and interactions that both give us joy and make life worth living.

That isn’t to say that these rules aren’t a grim necessity; only that the coronavirus, in addition to everything else it has done, shouldn’t take our empathy from us.

Politicians’ careers are ending because they failed to follow the spirit if not the letter of the rules we must all abide by. Some politicians have done so to work on their tans in the middle of the Canadian winter. Others have done so to spend precious time with an ailing grandmother. If you can’t recognize and appreciate the difference between the two, then you will probably end up with the politicians you deserve.

Royce Koop is head of the political studies department at the University of Manitoba.