The bombshell announcement

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer is set to make a bombshell announcement in the Bay of Quinte riding sometime in the next week, The Times has learned. The riding was chosen, according to party insiders, because it is a “key battleground bellwether swing riding”—one of just 338 such ridings in the federal campaign.

But with an announcement this big, details are bound to dribble out in advance, and the press and the other parties are ready with their questions and responses. Scheer will apparently propose to do away with the HST on soap and soap products. According to a preliminary text of the announcement, “Ordinary working families use soap to clean themselves after a hard day’s work, and we are all for the promotion of healthy and clean families. People also use soap to make themselves appear clean in trying to pursue those jobs that Justin Trudeau has failed to create.

“Justin Trudeau just doesn’t care about ordinary working Canadian families; if he did, he would have removed the tax four years ago,” the draft statement asserts.

The party puts a foregone HST estimate of $10.3275 million on the promise. It is unclear whether that estimate is based on both caked and liquid soap sales, or caked soap sales alone.

What is the party’s motivation in making such a high-risk announcement at this stage in the campaign? The answer, it would appear, lies in the subtle messaging that comes along with the soap metaphor. Who was the great Canadian soap box orator? Why, that great and conservative Canadian Sir John A. Macdonald, of course. Which leader is more likely to have entered a soap box derby when he was a kid? Why, young Andrew Scheer again: Justin Trudeau probably had his own miniature Mercedes instead.

Who presided over the biggest soap opera of the past couple of years? That was Justin Trudeau, who got rid of those meddlesome women Jody Wilson Raybould and Jane Philpott. And more pointedly, which leader has the cleaner face: Andrew Scheer, who looks like he has just come home from babysitting his neighbour’s kids, or Justin Trudeau, who has still got years of work to do in cleansing out that black and brown facial grease left over from the riotous parties he has attended in costume over the years? No need for Mr. Scheer to keep rubbing it in; the soap will do it for him.

Justin Trudeau and his team are preparing an aggressive response. Said one aide, “While the rest of us have to make do with a quick body wash in the shower, Andrew Scheer is happy to subsidize the bubble bath soakings of the richest one per cent of Canadians. If we are going to subsidize Canadians to stay clean, we should do it through refundable tax credits on all incomes below $100,000.”

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is preparing a statement to the effect that soaps of all kinds—although they would not include anti-aging creams—should be rolled into his national pharmacare program, and that the beneficiaries of the measure as proposed would be big soap manufacturing conglomerates rather than everyday Canadians. Green Party leader Elizabeth May stated she is prepared to support the measure provided it was limited only to hand-made soaps made without tallow or other animal matter. Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet dismissed the proposal as an infringement on the rights of Quebecers to assert their own cultural identity; and People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier stated that the soap proposal is nothing more than a calculated appeal to immigrant voters.

The press meanwhile, is getting ready to pepper Scheer with ‘gotcha’ questions. By “soap,” does he include detergents? What about shampoos, or moisturizers and conditioners? The consensus press view is that Mr. Scheer has missed an opportunity. Said one reporter “If he really wanted to pander to voters, he should have taken the tax off suds, not soap. That would be a real bombshell.”

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca