PHOTO ADRIAN WYLD, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh during a leaders’ debate last September
This week, a probe conducted by Nanos Research told us that if an election were held now, the Conservative Party of Canada would collect 35.6% of the voting intentions against 30% for the Liberals. With 19.6% of the vote, the NDP is down 2 points. A setback that comes in the wake of the hand extended by Jagmeet to Justin to guarantee him stability in exchange for favors. Among these demands of the NDP, there is the famous dental insurance program which I secretly hoped to take advantage of to finally solve my problem of oral depopulation inherited from my mother. Okay, that’s a joke! However, I don’t know if you’ve guessed it, but widely spaced teeth like mine don’t always bring happiness, especially when it comes to eating corn.
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More seriously, for the many people who really dreamed of this dental program, it will unfortunately be necessary to be patient. In question, Jagmeet risks losing all along the line in the alliance with Trudeau. We bet that at the end of this association, he will say that Justin lied to him like a tooth-puller.
“Lying like a tooth-puller” is an expression that dates from the 16and century. In those times when painkillers didn’t exist, having a tooth pulled was cold and the patients were screaming like possessed. To give their clients a chance, the dentist-pullers of the time chose to perform their surgery during fairgrounds. Admit that you would think twice before getting a root canal treatment from a guy from Beauce Carnaval. Lying under the tooth puller, the patient’s cries of pain were drowned out by the sounds of trumpets and drums. The specialist armed with pliers could then continue to solicit clients by promising them that he could pull out their tooth without any pain.
Today, progress has taken its toll and most dentists are true professionals who almost manage to make you love oral hygiene. And if they operate painlessly, many sweet-toothed patients are still screaming, screaming and crying. Especially when they are given, without fanfare or trumpet, a hefty bill that would tear their hearts out. Because if today’s dentists can freeze your mouth in less than two, they never thought of freezing their prices!
When I heard Jagmeet Singh reach out to Justin Trudeau to keep him in power in exchange for favors, I wondered what kind of friendship would emerge from this rapprochement. I anticipated a friendship between oil and water. As my mother used to say, in a friendship between oil and water, there is never equality.
No matter how much we stir the mixture and talk nonsense, phase separation will be inevitable. In other words, oil will always eventually rise above the mix and show water its true place in the relationship.
When I saw Jagmeet Singh reaching out to Justin Trudeau to push, among other things, his dental insurance case, I thought he was going to get screwed. There is indeed a big gap between having an idea, however noble it may be, and putting it into practice in the provinces without consulting them first. The verdict is in. The provinces clearly seem to have other priorities. What they want long before this dental insurance is a substantial increase in health transfers to give themselves the means to care for the aging Canadian population more effectively. A population for whom teeth are unfortunately incidental, since we all know that in CHSLDs, the provinces will not give them anything other than soft food.
When I saw this comparison, I wondered if Jagmeet really mastered his chromatic circle by trying to mix orange and red in this way. In such an attempt at amalgamation, the red always ends up masking the orange color and taking up all the space. “Never let yourself be licked by an animal capable of swallowing you,” my mother used to say in such a situation. This is what is likely to happen, because we all know that politicians do not need insurance to have long teeth.