What's a little light treason among friends?

On circled wagons, seven-letter words that start with T, and men you should continue to not respect.

“A clandestine intervention in Canada’s elections is not exactly ‘interference’ if it’s solicited, invited and welcomed, and it’s not precisely ‘foreign’ if the culprits are willing Canadian operatives and proxies in foreign-directed influence campaigns.”

-Terry Glavin, National Post

While it may be no one’s idea of a breezy summer beach read, the annual Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada’s Democratic Processes and Institutions, released Monday, may end up proving to be the season’s Canadian political page-turner not written by friend of the newsletter Andrew Lawton.

Still in its relative infancy — and unfortunately neededly-relevant in an era of the Han Dongs of the world bussing in international students under threat to rig his nomination, and the Justin Trudeaus of the world being partially financed by Richmond millionaires driving white Mercedes’ G-Wagons — five years of NSICOP publishings have quickly shifted in tone from relative bureaucratic checked-outed-ness, to “a dreary enumeration of profound ethical and possibly criminal transgressions committed by Canada’s senior politicians, mostly but not exclusively by the governing Liberals.” (Glavin)

Those profound ethical and ‘possibly’ criminal transgressions carry more weight this time when a government finds itself at 24-26% in the polls, and foremost national security experts finally feel comfortable enough to say “this is textbook treason.”

That’s a big word, one of the T-words. It’s likely what Trudeau and a few in cabinet have been guilty of the entire time. How else can one explain frequent reports, even from ostensibly Liberal-minded bureaucrats, suggesting Canada is now rife with politicians and their hacks, who are trading state secrets and intel on the regular with foreign agents and diasporic front groups.

Spend enough time in Downtown Ottawa these days (hopefully not by choice) and you’ll hear some stories; stories many can only allude to out of fear of reprisal.

The MPs on foreign payrolls will end up being in the few. The Liberals will outnumber the Conservatives by a minimum of 2:1. The names you end up hearing will not surprise you. What may surprise you is what little care went into covering up these matters in the first place.

Almost as if they didn’t care. Almost as if they never respected you, or the office in the first place.

Almost as if they’re traitors.

When friends in the scribe-o-sphere like Spencer Fernando write about a government that has grown “disloyal,” they’re all over the target. And it’s not about shedding crocodile tears over the state of democracy like some Lincoln Project #resistance grifter with a rap sheet, it’s about the continued fundamental disrespect being shown towards those who are simply trying to scrape by, keep their kids safe, and afford a home, while a ruling political class’s eyes largely remain elsewhere.

In the less-private-by-the-day case of the last of the Trudeau Liberals, those eyes, internally, are seemingly on plutocratic Bond villain bucks, and dirty deals, done dirt cheap. Externally, they remain on all the window-dressing you’ve come to expect: luxury beliefs like pretending taxes on the working poor change the weather, the coddling and absurd melding of fervent Islamists with mentally unwell young women with blue hair, and attempting to make the relitigation of a woman’s right to choose, or gay marriage, a thing, when it’s not, and hasn’t been, and in how many different ways can Pierre Poilievre make that clear?

And yet, as noted here with increased frequency, once-successful attempts to wag the dog by the tail continue to remain inert.

When a Liberal health minister, who has spent more time overseeing the expansion of a G7-leading euthanasia program than he has on clearing years-long wait lists, attempted to blame the state of the climate on the summer family road trip, as if a few hours on the car ride to Webers on Highway 11 is akin to some Mad Max-esque hellscape, the mockery that poured in was as swift and merciless as it was deserved.

And these were remarks that were prepared (!) — seemingly by one of the last masked thirtysomething-year-old comms pros with pronouns in their bio that the Liberals have been able to cobble together.

Not to be outdone, the party has gone in search of more profound new lows.

This may come as a surprise to, well, idiots, but when the far-right boogeyman is the son of a gay dad, has a gay deputy leader, and is surrounded by a Conservative infrastructure that may be able to sign up more phallic-havers and menstruaters (did I do well, increasingly-radical Pride season activist overlords?) for inter-party softball, we are well and truly at the bottom of the barrel.

But of course we are. On matters of foreign interference, waterboarded economies, low-skill immigration onslaughts, claiming “this isn’t who we are” when another synagogue takes a molotov cocktail through a window, this is exactly who they are, and wish for us to be.

For every day you don’t give them the satisfaction of giving in — of giving up — you, mercifully normal reader, continue to reclaim your story, in this third-act of Canada’s lost decade.

Now there’s an ending to a summer beach read worth tucking into.