Article content continued
Everything should be on the table, very much including the unprecedented amounts of money devoted to various help packages. Are these the right amounts? Are the programs properly targeting those who most need the help? Are we doing our best to guard against unintended consequences? Where are we planning to find the money anyway? How will we pay it back? Those are all questions worth asking and debating with honesty and openness on all sides. Nobody has all the answers. But together, we might.
The point is not to defeat a particular group of politicians, but to strengthen ourselves so we’re better equipped to deal with whatever calamity hits us next. It helps if we proceed with the assumption that most people are trying to do the best job they can with good intentions, not that the guys on the other team are pathological liars bent on destroying everything we hold dear.
Consensus politics does not mean we all agree. Au contraire; knocking ideas together is how progress is made. Knocking ideas, mind you. Not one another. That should be how we do politics going forward.
Brigitte Pellerin is an Ottawa writer.
