Nature Finds A Way - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

You have to spend money to save money - or so the saying goes. I’m not quite sure on that, actually; rewatched Glengarry Glen Ross recently, so I’m entirely off of my financial investment axis. In fact, maybe Pierre Poilievre watched Glengarry as well, because I think he needs a refresher.

 

It’s not every day that an unemployed man on the job hunt makes the news and yet, here we are. So incompetent is Poilievre that he failed to win his own riding, as the cherry on top of the monumental collapse of his party’s lead in the polls - which, for a time, had been historic in nature - leading to the election of Mark Carney as our next Prime Minister.

 

A delicious Tweet from Poilievre in 2023 is again making the rounds. In it, he stated that, “In the real world, if you don’t do your job you lose it.” Not that a lifelong politician knows anything about the real world whatsoever, but he’s getting a face-full of it now.

 

Or is he?

 

The answer, of course, is that he’s not. 

 

In an effort to keep Poilievre on as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Damien Kurek will be giving up his seat so Poilievre can not only contest a by-election but that he too can be parachuted into the most guaranteed lay-up of a race so he doesn’t risk the humiliation of losing once again. This way he gets to keep doing “his” job despite, you know, not doing it and effectively losing it.

 

(Side note: while unlikely, I have to hope that Kurek, after winning his riding with an astounding 81.8 per cent of the vote and being asked to step aside for a failure, had the guts to evoke The Departed in his chat with Poilievre and introduce himself as the guy who does his job. “You must be the other guy.”) And, all this for just over $1 million, which is what some are saying this will cost. 

 

So, yes. We (taxpayers) need to shell out $1 million so Poilievre can feel important again. But just think of all the savings that $1 million will bring when he’s elected and he axes every tax he can find. Sound investment, really.

 

And yet, more than halfway through this column, I haven’t even arrived at my point. My point, this week, if you read the headline, is that Poilievre’s predicament here is a stone-cold case of a person whom a specific sect of society has deemed important and, as a result, refuses to let him fail, and, in fact, jockeys, manipulates and rearranges to keep him afloat.

 

Stables of sycophants, all over the world, have, for one reason or another (though this seems like the right place to quote Don Ohlmeyer with, “the answer to all of your questions is money”), simply chosen people that they just refuse to allow to fail. Examples of people like this can be found in the highest offices of the world - like that of the President of the United States of America - and even in some of our most local positions, like, say, people who have stiffed businesses, service clubs and tradespeople with big-money bills after hosting failed events, but still cropping up, shamelessly, in full second-chance mode.
We have to ask: what do we, as society, get from these people; these people who always land on their feet because the powerful refuse to let them land on anything else?

 

It’s hard to tell. Too often, it feels like a club of people who benefit from a Golden Goose trying to ensure it avoids the slaughterhouse. 

 

But, Poilievre will have an important job again, and isn’t that all that really matters?

 

You’d hope that he’d then soften his stance on people receiving hand-outs, working for what they earn, etc., considering he only eats because of taxpayer dollars and can’t even win the ability to rightfully do it, but I doubt it.