There’s a term in Ottawa for times when the folks in the nation’s capital have lost touch with what’s happening in the rest of the country.
It’s called the “Ottawa bubble.”
Classic examples of Ottawa-bubble stories include a Canadian senator complaining about broken crackers and ice cold camembert cheese or a former cabinet minister ordering a $16 glass of orange juice.
The problem with Ottawa-bubble stories? They often distract public and political attention away from serious issues that affect real people in other parts of the country several hundred kilometres away.
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Take grain transportation as an example.
Farmers say that the first indications that this current shipping season wasn’t going quite as planned emerged in the fall, long before things fell of the rails, so to speak, in February.
It wasn’t until the end of February that the situation even made it on the Ottawa radar, when the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and Grain Growers of Canada held a joint news conference urging immediate federal action.
That news conference was telling in two ways.
For one thing, two farm groups (who haven’t historically agreed with each other) were holding a joint news conference where they were in almost complete agreement that something needed to be done.
In the world of farm politics, when everyone agrees on a particular issue, that generally means there’s a situation on the brink of turning into crisis, if it isn’t on already.
The other telling sign was that non-farm media were in attendance, with mainstream media slowly picking up the story.
The problem with the Ottawa bubble is that too often issues reach a crisis point before it catches the federal government’s attention.
Response times need to be quick, which isn’t always possible given the fact government is typically a slower moving machine.
Put bluntly: it creaks.
For example, Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay and Transport Minister Marc Garneau only wrote the railways asking them to come up with a plan to get grain moving again on March 6, which instructed Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway to publish and submit their plans by March 15.
The letter came one day before the March 7 emergency agriculture committee meeting that was forced by Conservative and NDP MPs.
While the intention of the meeting was honourable, in reality under parliamentary rules it was simply a meeting to talk about having another meeting.
The actual so-called emergency meeting isn’t scheduled until March 19.
It took two hours to negotiate that meeting: the initial proposal put forward by the Liberals at committee was to hold a two-hour meeting on March 21 with the first hour set aside for the railways and the second hour set aside for farm groups.
Let’s ignore the fact that someone thought that an issue as complex as rail transportation could be addressed in a somewhat in-depth manner in two hours — two weeks after the initial meeting to discuss the situation and almost a month after farm groups warned there was a serious problem.
And, while the situation unfolding in Western Canada isn’t quite at the level of the 2013-14 crisis, there are still plenty of farmers across the Prairies who say cash is tight and the delivery delays are real.
A quick scan of farmers’ Twitter accounts in Western Canada confirms the stress being felt by some farms. Those voices should’ve had an easier time popping the Ottawa bubble before it hit a crisis point.
Politics is a local business. Nine times out of 10, the issues that matter to voters are the ones that directly affect them. Not being able to pay bills or prepare for spring planting properly are classic examples.
If there’s a political lesson to learn from the situation unfolding in grain transportation it’s this: there’s more to life than the Ottawa bubble. A reality check outside of Ottawa every once in a while wouldn’t be the worst idea.
