(Image Credit: Screenshot from CityTV)

By Dylana Milobar

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: A visit from Trudeau, a fired candidate, a not-so-bold council

Sep 14, 2019 | 7:03 AM

AN INTERESTING WEEK IN POLITICS in the Loops — a federal election call, a fired NDP candidate and a not-so-bold move by City council.

Taking first things first, Justin Trudeau paid a visit to make a three-minute-and-45-second speech before heading elsewhere. He was here and in Victoria and Edmonton instead of in Toronto at a national debate with the other party leaders.

The prime minister has engaged in a fascinating dance with reporters since the moment the writ was dropped. Reporters ask him questions; he doesn’t answer. Instead, he offers a few words he clearly figures will make a more suitable video clip than if he gave a real answer. Then he grins.

Asked about his decision to skip the first leaders debate, Trudeau said he was looking forward to being in Edmonton. Asked about SNC-Lavelin, he waxed on about his version of transparency.

And on it goes. As much of a turn-off as it is, it’s a well-planned strategy, designed to avoid Trudeau ever appearing on the defensive. He does not want to see any headlines that start with “Trudeau denies….”

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His snubbing of the Macleans-City TV leadership debate is interesting. One can only speculate about the reasons. Maybe he decided he’d rather not have to answer exactly the same kinds of questions reporters have been asking him, but it sure wasn’t because he’d rather drop into Hello Toast.

Not that Trudeau missed much. The debate mainly consisted of Elizabeth May making faces, rolling her eyes, scoffing and interrupting Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh, clearly confident she’s the only one who knows anything about anything.

Keep an eye open to see if skipping debates becomes a thing in the Kamloops election. Liberals have a habit of doing that when they think the wrong crowd will be there.

The last time Terry Lake ran for provincial office, in 2013, he and running mate Todd Stone refused to attend forums sponsored by the Kamloops-Thompson Teachers Association and the Farmers Market.

Lake did it the previous election, too, reasoning that teachers “are not non-partisan.” As I wrote at the time, “Since when should a candidate attend forums only if the questions and comments are going to be to his or her liking?”

Local B.C. Liberal candidates were also no-shows to some of the forums in 2017.

Hopefully, this federal election won’t follow the pattern of the past few B.C. elections when it comes to attendance at forums. Other than a spectacularly tone-deaf social media post on the issue of student loans, Lake has had a pretty successful launch. (As brief as it was, Trudeau’s visit on the first full day of the campaign was a bit of a coup.)

Lake’s strange Tweet came in response to one from Green candidate Iain Currie last week that most Canadians complete their degree with on average $26,000 in student debt. “We must invest in future generations by ensuring tuition is not a barrier to access,” he wrote.

Lake Tweeted back, “Only half of graduating students have debt.”

The issue, of course, is not that “only half” of graduating students have debt, but that half of them do, and often tens of thousands of dollars of it. Lake is out of touch if he thinks this isn’t an issue worth addressing.

Meanwhile, we have the case of Dock Currie. I ran into him at a coffee shop downtown on Monday, he was fired Tuesday and the announcement was made Wednesday.

I wrote about some of the details of his firing on Thursday but it continues to baffle me. Neither Currie nor B.C. NDP campaign chair Glen Sanford would fess up to what was actually said in the offending social media message.

Even after the Toronto Star got hold of the details, Currie declined to confirm it with me during some late evening email exchanges. Neither did he take me up on my suggestion we talk by phone.

The party clearly sets a high bar for its candidates when it comes to social media, but it didn’t offer up any written criteria so we don’t know what that bar is. Currie made a silly comment in a personal message that apparently was never in the public realm, yet he lost his candidacy.

And then there was City council’s handling of the Kamloops Film Society’s application for a permissive tax exemption, which would have saved the group around $15,000 and might have made the difference between survival and folding its tent.

When the application came in front of council Tuesday, Coun. Bill Sarai successfully moved that it and two other applications be severed from each other, which made sense.

The other two applications were denied, but when Coun. Mike O’Reilly moved to accept administration’s recommendation to deny the film society request, nobody seconded it.

That would seem to suggest that eight of the nine councillors supported the film society but when staff informed council that a resolution would be needed to approve the society’s request, nobody on council stepped up.

One has the impression that councillors didn’t want to turn it down but didn’t have the courage to go against a staff recommendation, either.

The City Hall bureaucracy isn’t paid to be creative or to take sides. Its job is to interpret and act on policies set by council. That’s why it recommended turning down the film society. Council was free to agree with that recommendation or not.

But on that day, council wasn’t up for the “bold leadership” it brags about in its public messages.

The result is that the film society application, and maybe its future, is left in limbo, neither approved nor denied.

An interesting week, indeed.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and former newspaper editor. He publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.