Free speech, free trade and failure: how federal politics touched us this week
OTTAWA — The winner of the first week back from summer on Parliament Hill? A banner-dragging aircraft-for-rent.
On Monday, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation hired one to welcome MPs back to Ottawa for the fall session, pulling a giant banner that denounced Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s tax proposals as too anti-business.
Not to be outdone, opponents of investor provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement welcomed incoming trade negotiators from Mexico and the United States with a hired blimp urging an end to the business-friendly protections.
Officials on all sides would undoubtedly argue that neither the tax proposals nor the NAFTA talks lend themselves to two or three words on an airborne headline, but they are at pains to explain their own ideas so succinctly.