Writing a political column from Ottawa should have some clear rules about what is and is not acceptable.
Therefore, every editor should be on guard against Ottawa columnists who make cheap and easy analogies between the real world and politics.
For example, last week, angry Quebec sheep farmers looking for more federal money and seeing a good opportunity with yet another “Quebec election over the future of Canada” underway, used the opportunity to drive a hundred or so sheep onto Parliament Hill on trucks.
It was Wednesday, caucus day.
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It would be wrong for an Ottawa columnist to write that it reminded him of Liberal caucus members being driven to their weekly meeting.
The sheep, who had no idea why they were there and who probably looked at the lush grass of Parliament Hill simply as a good place to graze before moving on, did not have politics on their minds.
Likewise, it would be wrong to draw grand parallels between the half-billion-dollar effort underway to rebuild the structures of Parliament Hill and the Reform Party effort to rebuild the structures of Canadian politics.
Both efforts are likely to result in vast expenditures of time, money and effort to achieve a result that looks very much like the way things used to look.
But surely that would be an unfair analogy. And of course, there is the endless work underway to rebuild Wellington Street, the main boulevard in front of Parliament Hill and the road which runs in front of the building where Senate agriculture committee hearings are held.
All summer, Wellington Street has been a series of deep holes, dug up, filled in and dug up again.
A columnist looking for a cheap comparison might mention that those deep holes going nowhere remind him of Health Canada and the very deep hole it has been digging for itself at Senate agriculture committee hearings on the dairy growth hormone BST.
There is evidence of corporate and bureaucratic influence over science, intimidation, break-ins, destroyed documents and allegations of evidence destruction. The hole keeps getting deeper as minister Allan Rock insists all is under control. He is not that tall.
But there of course is no similarity between the deep holes in Wellington Street and the health department’s plight.
That would be too easy.
So an Ottawa political columnist should at all costs avoid such cheap tricks of the trade and concentrate on real issues and real political action in the capital.
Okay. The next few months will be dominated by Opposition demands for farm aid and government wiggling to insist that the case has not been made, existing farm safety nets have not been fully exhausted and there is no money.
Opposition MPs, who normally insist the Liberals are over-spending wastrels, will portray the government as tight-fisted and insensitive. The Liberals did the same in opposition.
A responsible Ottawa columnist would resist comparing this to the inter-changeable heroes and villains of the World Wrestling Federation’s fake theatrics.
