Chris Selley: The grocery wars are unmasking Canadian politics, and it's a great thing – National Post

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Last week, pollster David Coletto wondered aloud whether the Ottawa establishment might come to regret the Great Loblaw Wars of 2023 — the altogether idiotic fight, spurred by rising food costs, to determine who supposedly loathes Galen Weston and his business practices most.

“Kinda feel that this is opening a Pandora’s box that GR (government relations) pros (i.e., lobbyists) from all sides won’t like,” Coletto wrote on X. “Ottawa is a small town with … many connections — family, spouses, etc. — who work in politics and lobby on behalf of organizations,” he noted.

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Do any of the parties, sitting in their glass houses, really want to start accusing the others?

Hell yeah they do.

Coletto issued his prediction after the Liberals tried to deflect allegations of their excessive genuflection toward the Westons. (One can understand the Liberals’ motivation, at least. They did after all give Loblaw $12 million for new refrigerators for no damn reason.)

In the House of Commons, Housing Minister Sean Fraser noted that arch-Conservative strategist Jenni Byrne, Pierre Poilievre’s presumed campaign director, is “actually a registered lobbyist for Loblaw in Ontario.” (She isn’t, actually, but her eponymous lobbying firm and several of its principals certainly are and have been.)

The battle has only intensified since, perhaps coming to a head in the House on Wednesday.

Confronted with the notion that Byrne is “a high-priced consultant for Loblaws,” Poilievre shot back: “The prime minister’s new marketing director, Max Valiquette, did marketing for Loblaws for four years. Don Guy, the prime minister’s chief pollster, works for GT and Company, which collects cheques from Loblaws. Dan Arnold, his other pollster, also get cheques from Loblaws. Are they the ones who forced him to quadruple the carbon tax on our food?”

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Trudeau returned fire: “(Byrne) is actively on the Loblaws payroll while at the same time feeding lines to the leader of the Opposition about food prices and concocting a theory around carbon pricing and grocery prices.”

Poilievre: “The Prime Minister had someone who is his director of caucus services, named Julie DeWolfe, who is now a lobbyist for Loblaws.”

Trudeau: “The Conservatives would rather listen to their lobbyist buddy who works for Loblaw and defend the interests of major grocery retailers, instead of fighting on behalf of Canadians to bring down grocery prices.”

And so on, and so on. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh got in on the act too with a recent post on X accusing Poilievre and Trudeau of accepting campaign donations from Big Grocery. It’s unclear whether he didn’t realize that what he’s alleging is illegal — presumably he would present evidence if he had any — or just doesn’t care. (In a bizarre diversion from the anti-plutocrat campaign, the NDP also decided this week to attack Conservative MP Scott Reid for sitting on the board of Giant Tiger, his family’s discount grocery and department-store chain.)

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This, as Coletto implied, is a game of mutually assured destruction. Because when you start digging around in lobbyist registries, you quickly learn (if you weren’t aware before) that all this partisan mudslinging is mostly just pantomime from a class of multitalented strategists-cum-lobbyists-cum-staffers who all mostly get along in real life, and who are fat and happy no matter who wins the next election.

DeWolfe, whom Poilievre mentioned, is indeed listed as a principal on the GT and Company website, and is indeed registered federally to lobby for Loblaw. And the G in GT is indeed Liberal strategist and pollster Don Guy, as Poilievre said. But the T is NDP uber-strategist Brian Topp.

GT principals include veterans of many federal and provincial campaigns and ministers’ offices: Conservatives including Shir Barzilay, Julie O’Driscoll and Laryssa Waler; New Democrats including Cheryl Oates and Michelle Mungall; and Liberals including Andrew Teliszewsky and Genevieve Tomney. (None lobbied for Loblaw, it seems, but remember: Poilievre went after the company itself, not the individuals.)

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Others who have lobbied in recent years for Loblaw include Andrew Steele, former senior adviser to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, who’s now vice-president of Strategy Corp. Those who have lobbied for Metro include Christine McMillan, a partner at Crestview Strategy, who was a senior staffer in McGuinty’s office; Nicolas Descroix from Mongeau Pellerin, who was a senior adviser to Quebec’s justice and higher-education ministers under the CAQ government; and Andrew Brander, also out of Crestview, whose bio notes he was “acknowledged in The Hill Times Terrific 25 survey of top parliamentary staffers on various occasions” for his work with different ministers under the Harper government.

Melissa Lantsman, deputy leader of the Conservatives, lobbied for Walmart while she was at Enterprise Canada.

It’s insane that any of these parties should feel confident attacking others on things like this — unless they’re hopelessly deluded, or they take us all for idiots, or both.

The curtain is being lifted here, and Canadians ought to be paying attention to it. At best, it invites us not to believe the hyper-torqued nonsense coming out of politicians’ mouths. If they’re spectacular hypocrites on the question of big grocery chains, they’re only slightly less spectacular hypocrites on many other questions.

At worst, it invites us to conclude of every party, the Conservatives in particular, what has always been true of the Liberals: Partisans believe that when their leaders, ministers and siblings-in-arms do a Supposedly Bad Thing, it’s literally not the same as when the other guys did the same Supposedly Bad Thing. Because they mean well, while the others mean evil.

Either way, it’s past time to open Pandora’s box and keep it open.

National Post

cselley@postmedia.com

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