There is an old expression linking sausages and laws: basically, you never wish to see one being made. Now there might be a sausage-link to politics, but here, too, you probably never wish to see it actually being done.
Like it or not, we all got a taste of sausage politics through former Attorney General/Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould’s testimony the other day.
There are all kinds of things to think about here, many of them quite philosophical, but I would like to concentrate on just one aspect.
But think about this, first. Walking up a flight of stairs is easy for some people. For others, a couple steps are a huge obstacle. Similarly, for some, to tear a fingernail is an uncomfortable, but minor pain and a quickly forgettable inconvenience. For others, like me, that’s really painful and deeply uncomfortable for quite some time.
My point? Simply that it is possible that the very same pain, the very same intensity, could be experienced quite differently. You might think that it doesn’t hurt all that much and I am claiming that it most certainly does.
But the pain, we both agree, is there.
Likewise, the pressure that was applied to Wilson-Raybould was there. No one denies it. Trudeau’s side admits it and so does Wilson-Raybould.
But Trudeau’s side says that it was “acceptable pressure” and Wilson-Raybould says that it was not.
Why would they differ regarding the “acceptability” qualifier? Most likely Trudeau’s side would say something like, “what we did in terms of pressure was pretty standard Ottawa, high-level politics pressure.” In other words, Trudeau’s side would claim that they applied “conventional pressure” to Wilson-Raybould. In sum, as the PM says, there is nothing new here and nothing really to see.
This explanation and defence, of course, makes Trudeau just another politician, instead of one who would do things differently as he claimed he would.
However, Trudeau does seem to have been somewhat faithful to his claim. That is, he brought someone in, Wilson-Raybould, who was going to do politics differently.
Wilson-Raybould seems to contest the acceptability of what I have called “conventional pressure”. That is not, she says, the way that things should be done—even if that is the way things have always been done.
But enough about the politicians.
Here is the nub of the issue: do we, as the electorate, continue to accept this conventional pressure as part of the way that politics is done or do we opt for another way of doing it?
Now that we’ve seen the sausage’s formation, do we continue eating them or go vegetarian?
