The Donald Trump School of Politics (DTSP) - which essentially involves a complete lack of attention to the truth and facts - has come to Canada in a big way.
Arguably, Brad Wall, who just recently stepped down as Premier of Saskatchewan, has been a graduate of DTSP for years, even before it existed, although with Wall it was usually more of a case of refusing to be persuaded by the facts, rather than invention of new alternative facts. Doug Ford, the Premier-Elect of Ontario, is a definite practitioner of the DTSP, as he showed during his election campaign.
And now Andrew Scheer, the Conservative leader of the federal oppositon, has realized that, hey, this works, maybe I don't have to be constrained by the facts any more. In recent weeks, Sheer has been posting on Twitter (sound familiar?) all sorts of erroneous and indefensible statements about Liberal taxation policy and wrong and misleading information about the costs of the national carbon tax the Liberals are in the process of bringing in.
Most recently he has been banging on about the swing-set Justin Trudeau has had put in as part of the upgrades at the Prime Minister's summer residence at Harrington Lake for the prime ministerial kids. Scheer insists on using a figure of $7,500 for the swing-set even though it has been repeatedly explained to him that Trudeau actually paid for the swing-set himself, out if his own pocket, and all the taxpayers have been billed for is $900 installation costs. But $7,500 makes a more compelling story at Question Time than $900, so Scheer has been merrily using the $7,500 figure as he uses up valuable Question Time trying to score political points any way he can, regardless of the true figure.
You can already see how the next election debates are going to go, and facts are clearly going to be the first casualty.
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