NEWS FLASH: Ontario Conservatives Call for Stephen Harper to Step Down!

"The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario immediately demanded Stephen Harper step down, saying 'this case strikes right at the heart of the Prime Minister's office."

The Duffy scandal has rocked Canada; it's a sordid tale of Machievellian misdeeds carried out behind closed doors.  Heck, even the Prime Minister's Issues Manager has said he was "wary" when it came to the ethics of approaching the outside audit firm Deloitte.  Yet the sticky fingers that snaked out of the heart of Harper's office touched Deloitte, the Senate, the Party office, so on and so forth.

All despite the fact the Prime Minister looked the Canadian public in the eye and said no one but Nigel Wright was involved.

It's no surprise that the PCPO, consistent in their values and steadfast in their principled defence of Ontarians would call for accountability at the highest levels.

Right?

Of course it isn't; that would be silly.  Harper's one of their guys, so clearly, it's a different story.  He didn't know, and we should have expected him to know, nor is he in any way accountable for the actions of his staff.

Premier Wynne, on the other hand, is a Liberal.  When it's about her team, it's okay.  What's acceptable fodder (and is before the courts) and what isn't (because it's before the courts) changes depending who's involved and what the tactical advantages are.

The unedited quote from above: The Opposition immediately demanded Kathleen Wynne step down, saying “this case strikes right at the heart of the premier’s office.”

Therein lies the problem with gotcha politics - it's a matter of glass houses.  It's great for Parties to say "that's not my level of government" or "that's something different", but naive for them to assume the general public shares their distinctions.

Quite the opposite - such stories feed into the notion that all politicians are the same, all parties are corrupt and that they all say/do whatever suits their interest, the public interest be damned.  On matters such as this, it's an accurate description.

This is the thing backroom in-it-to-win-it strategists don't seem to get or care to get; elections are the tip of the democratic iceberg, but there is a host of opinion and conversation that happens below the surface.  You can win the electoral battle and still lose the civic engagement war.

A growing percentage of Canadians have given up on Parliament and, to an extent, our model of democracy.

Far more than any terrorist attack, it's partisan shenanigans, cover-ups and hypocritical inconsistencies that are weakening democracy in this country.

The solution isn't to call for one person's head and ignore the misdeeds of another.  The solution comes when we recognize we're all in this together, and that elections aren't about them, but about us.

It's time to stop asking the other guy to step down.  It's time all our elected officials and their non-elected staff start stepping up.  It's the Honourable thing to do.