Leafs & Liberals | Birds of a Feather?
Post 88 | Flaming out - and Budget Arrogance
While watching the Leafs take a Game 7 shellacking from Florida, an illusive thought flit about my head. I couldn’t pin it down. Chewed at me a few days.
I quickly got past wondering how they could play so horribly - so it wasn’t that. And readily forgave myself for investing a few weeks of emotion on them, given I watched little hockey through the year and didn’t ultimately much care what happened.
But something else nagged. Some connection I was missing. Something distressingly familiar. Then Gadzooks, it hit me!
I realized there were eerie similarities between the Leafs and Liberals.
How is this you ask? With a nod to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, let me count the ways…
Primary supporters hail from Ontario and Atlantic Canada, standing by them no matter inadequacies and disappointing results. And who delusionally believe they represent all Canadians.
They get your hopes up with promises and hype supported by a few brief glimmers - only to disappoint time and again.
Refrain of supporters at the end of a term/season?…Lousy bums. Never again. Booo!
Refrain of supporters at the beginning of a term/season?…It’s gonna be different this time. Go team!
You hear talk of urgency, crisis, all-hands-on-deck - and are promised tireless work to slay the dragon. You then watch mystified as listless execution bears little resemblance to the words.
Poor performance has no penalties of accountability while being handsomely paid.
More time is spent attempting to justify failures than repairing them.
Mediocrity is nearly a religion.
Lips move in news conferences and you could swear something was said, but darned if you can recollect what.
They show occasional bursts of passion and excitement – proclaiming their love of country or team/city particularly during elections and contract re-negotiations, but it feels flat - as though someone programmed a robot to express momentary excitement but they couldn’t get the inflection quite right.
Passive aggressively blaming bogeymen is standard procedure.
They never come right out and say they’re responsible for failures. We faced a determined squad. Mistakes were made...
Top leadership is occasionally shaken up after which we’re assured all will be different. But change is veneer as the core remains and the broken organization remains, absent an occasional sacrificial lamb on whom blame is laid by innuendo - but We thank X for his service.
Hope gives way to disappointment.
Promises give way to failure.
No matter how many chairs they rearrange, things remain the same.
They all walk away happy and compensated. Fans and electorate perpetually suffer.
When the going gets tough, they are found either on the golf links or taking bows in some far off land courtesy of Canadian taxpayers and the government jet.
My apologies for being a bit too harsh…on the Leafs.
They are undoubtedly skilled, put in a solid effort through the year, provide us entertainment and something to cheer for. Closing the deal has been illusive but they sweat hard giving it a go. We give them our money by choice not obligation, and despite good pay for a few years they are provided few backend promises.
Same can’t be said about the Liberals.
“We don’t get fooled again, no, no”
~ The Who ~
Let’s chat about a little document - you know, the one that provides an accounting of how the government wasted our money and intends to further waste it in coming quarters - customarily called a Budget.
The Liberals proclaimed it unnecessary this year despite a decade of grisly deficits and missed projections. The most recent was 13 months ago in April 2024 with a (kinda) different government in power and where our (kinda) new one campaigned on expensive promises with sketchy affordability - and a few things (more than kinda) changed in our world since then. But apparently life is moving too fast and there’s not enough time for the 950-strong Department of Finance staff to help Carney execute on his most fundamental duty.
Gotta visit the Pope.
Carney seems to be already clambering up Mount Arrogance - to propose that running a country using our money doesn’t require a published budget and assuming we’re too daft to know better. This is the sort of nonsense that will quickly erode the small stash of goodwill I’m holding in reserve.
I’m intrigued to know which corporations Carney previously worked for where annual budgets and quarterly updates were optional and how shareholders felt about that.
And I don’t recall the gosh we’re too busy and it’s too complicated to deliver a budget intent being disclosed during the election campaign, but perhaps my memory was clouded by cowering in fear over Trump’s tariffs and overcome with gratitude that a brilliant guy from the towers of big finance was swooping in to deliver us from evil. Besides, who was talking budgets when the entire world apparently revolved around Trump and tariffs - and neither media nor Liberal supporters could be persuaded otherwise?
Naturally, the lack of budget has nothing to do with a Liberal intention to continue spending like drunken sailors while not accounting for it until so far down the road we again have no recourse. And where they can relegate all financial woes to tariffs, climate change, amorphous global events or whatever new bogeyman they dream up - certainly none to do with irresponsible fiscal management.
Nevertheless - after some backlash and condemnation last week that our new government would fail out of the gates in their most basic fiduciary duty, they found religion and changed course overnight.
Carney backtracked on his Finance Minister (though isn’t Mark really his own Finance Minister?) and declared there would indeed be a Fall budget after all (keep in mind that Fall ends December 20th). He announced this to a friendly foreign press corps during his trip to papal lands, after jetting off and leaving his newly appointed ragtag Cabinet unchaperoned, and only days after promising his every waking moment would be spent ensuring Canada’s safety and well-being in the face of the greatest threat since Confederation.
Golly he seems decidedly placid about everything now that the election is over. Has “the most significant crisis of our lifetimes” already passed and I missed it while screaming at the Leafs to win some puck battles?
Here’s a distressing update.
According to Oxford Economics, a US-based economic advisory firm, Carney has effectively suspended many of our retaliatory tariffs on US products with a net effect of dropping them to near zero. It seems he quietly cancelled a bunch of tariffs - grotesquely at odds with the fight of our lives reason for his being elected. The change came into effect April 15 but not announced until post-election May 7, the day after Mark’s reality show grip-and-grin at the White House where Trump awkwardly fawned over him. Interesting timing.
This has been picked up by multiple news outlets with a solid account in Epoch Times (nary a peep from CBC) but details have not otherwise been very clear, because without open disclosure from our government or a sitting Parliament to hold them to account we’re flying a bit blind. Maybe it’s a tempest in a teapot but Carney certainly hasn’t bellied up to the microphone with updates. Accountability continues its long vacation while Parliament is shuttered and we’re left either trusting or wondering.
Let’s see this week what we get when the King (that’s King Charles, not King Carney – but I forgive you for being confused) delivers the Throne Speech (again, for clarification - King Charles will deliver a speech from King Carney’s throne in our House of Commons). It will likely be little more than visionary nothing-speak, but perhaps offer more than we know to date, particularly in absence of a budget for another half year. Parliament will finally resume after that (for a few weeks, until Summer break kicks in), at which time they may resume stonewalling and obfuscating in much the same manner as the past ten years before Canada re-elected the same government with a new head on the old corpse.
Now that I think about it, I owe the Leafs an apology. In comparison, they strike me as hardworking, over-achievers. Sorry fellas - enjoy your golfing and see you next year.
Stay tuned and stay pragmatic.
The best way to improve the Leafs would be to allow another NHL franchise in the GTA. The best way to improve the Canadian would be to open up dairy, poultry, commercial air travel, media and financial services to competition.
While I am not sure there is a connection between the Liberal party and the Leafs, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your comments. Re the budget, I was terrified to hear Jolie say the budget takes a long time to prepare. Absolute dismissal of the Canadian taxpayer as a stakeholder.