Friday, December 30, 2005

Scandal saturation point

I understand the Income Trust thing in the limited way that people without financial or mathematical acumen do. I get that a significant amount of trading occurred which it appears may have benefited a select few people who had early information.

Maybe the masses are not seething at the possibility of yet another Liberal scandal because Liberal scandals are never easy. They are complicated, dealing with secret information, a legion of characters with connections and relationship that are difficult to keep track of, and they deal with money in sums incomprehensible to someone who makes under $30,000/year (which most means most Canadians).

Theft, deception and incompetence on the scale the Liberals have managed to achieve is wearying. That's how it works -- the Liberals succeed by wearing people down.

While I don't believe Ralph Goodale was directly responsible for any leak that may have occurred, it is amazing how two successive Liberal Finance Ministers have been oblivious to either overt wrong-doing, or careless negligence, carried out by people within their scope of scrutiny.

If Goodale passes this test with the public, the Liberals have a good chance of pulling this election out of the fire. Given that the investigation will continue beyond the election, he remains an innocent, though slightly accused man. That might be good enough for some to continue to shrug and say 'what's the big deal'.

M.K. Braaten writes about tonight's CTV news coverage, saying that it doesn't look good for the Liberals. I'm trying to share his optimism.

Hopefully, scandal-wearied Canadians will be listening as this continues to unfold but I fear we're approaching scandal-fatigue.

canadianna

2 comments:

Derek Richards said...

Perhaps Canadians can understand that the Prime Minister's personal physician benefited because interest in his company peaked on Nov22.05

One Day before the Goodale press conference on Trusts. Somebody had inside info.

Anonymous said...

I don't think there is a scandal saturation point.

Remember the initial Gomery report? It was generally believed that the Liberals wouldn't suffer as badly as they did when the Brault testimony surfaced, but they immediately dropped 10 points.

Canadians just have to be reminded of corruption and they stop supporting the Liberals. The problem is keeping it that way...