The week in commentary: How much for dinner with the prime minister?

It's that time of year again: the weather sucks, and we have to substitute sunshine for vitamins and cold medicine. Maybe that's why our prime minister's great complexion seems to be fading and he's showing a few wrinkles around the eyes. But we can't blame Trudeau for failing to keep up appearances after all, those $1,500 cash-for-access dinners must be stressful and dry.

But even your popularity with the kids is exhibiting signs of aging, Mr. Trudeau, especially with your recent attempt to take part in the outdated "dabbing" meme.

"Not only are you not actually hitting the dab correctly, but this perhaps the first time I've seen you pose for a social media photo op while maintaining the confidence of a hover-handing 15-year-old. The look on your face almost reads, 'Maybe I actually shouldn't be doing this," says Jake Kivan in Vice, the certified voice of young people everywhere.

At least be smart about it

There's no problem with cash-for-access events until you realize the ticket price is double your rent. And then, after you cough up the cash, there are rules about what you can say. "If anybody attending tries to raise 'departmental business,' then the minister should firmly tell them to make an appointment with the department," writes John Geddes in Maclean's. "Is it possible to consistently apply this sort of stringent rule to human interaction in informal settings? Skepticism isn't inappropriate." Maybe someone could figure out whether any attendees have bothered with making official appointments at all.

It's not like Trudeau is doing cash-for-access particularly well, either. As Alan Freeman says in iPolitics, they're having trouble mastering the dance involved with the age-old tradition: "Trudeau may have a fabulous ability to connect with ordinary people, but he and members of his cabinet like Bill Morneau clearly like doing the cocktail circuit and rubbing elbows with big shots. Why else would they be willing to squander so much political credibility for so little money?"

Addressing systemic racism

In Quebec, an investigation into police abuse of Indigenous women sparked by a Radio-Canada report alleging officers sexually and physically abused women came to a close. There were 38 files on the docket, but only one is getting a deeper look. Disappointed with the outcome, a group of students wrote a letter to the Montreal Gazette.

"As young students with hope for the future, we want to live in a society with a legal system that adequately protects indigenous women from systematic abuse," they wrote. "Yet the events in Val-d'Or make us wonder whether our current institutions have distanced themselves from old attitudes as much as we would like to think."

Fo Niemi, also writing for the Gazette, says reforming the province's institutions is urgent. "It is high time for the Quebec government to start concretely recognizing and addressing systemic racism," says Niemi. "Amending the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to explicitly prohibit this problem would be a first step. Ensuring that the Quebec Human Rights Commission end its denial of systemic racism and properly investigate complaints of this kind would be a second step."

And if preventing people suffering abuse and mistreatment at the hands of officials who claim to protect them is not enough of an incentive to take reconciliation seriously, there's a financial case for it. Dawn Madahbee Leach, Vice-Chairperson of the National Aboriginal Economic Development Board, and Chief Terrance Paul studied the economic benefits to reconciliation and wrote about it for the Ottawa Citizen. "Our report concludes that the continued economic marginalization of Canada's Indigenous peoples costs our economy $27.7 billion each year."

It seems like part of the answer to combating discrimination, racism, sexism, and xenophobia is to continue making diverse hires in our institutions. Alternatively, we can keep using loaded terms as a distraction and reading fake news in a desperate attempt to fool ourselves into thinking everything's just fine.

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