Given our poor track record of orchestrating a proper scandal, perhaps it’s no surprise that people are calling for Justin Trudeau to be barrelled over the edge of Niagara Falls for employing two nannies using the eight cents generated from every small coffee sold at Tim Horton’s.
Nevertheless, these people should settle down.
If you need somewhere current to direct your rage, the $37 billion dollars Ontario hydro consumers overspent is a good place to start. Or that time our federal government paid for a chuckwagon food truck in New York City as part of a $5 million grant to promote the Stampede.
For those rightfully unaware of nannygate, it’s essentially this: a considerable number of Canadians are upset that our Prime Minister has two nannies to take care of his three young children among his taxpayer-funded staff. It’s so absurd that it’s hard to know where to begin, so let’s start on a macro level and trickle down from there.
So, the staff.
Every politician – the Prime Minister, no less – has dozens of people on their payroll to help carry out the duties of government. Some are unjustifiably overpaid, while others are mere tag-alongs. The latter are like the appendix of the parliamentary anatomy; like all those dudes who lived off Allen Iverson’s money until they dragged him to bankruptcy. Part of this staff budget is exclusively reserved for domestic workers; including the two nannies, there will be the same number (six) working for Trudeau as there were for Stephen Harper, who had a no-longer-employed executive chef.
Nannies are not overpaid, nor are they appendixes. They’re also of more significant utility than a chef, looking after the three most important people in our Prime Minister’s life while he runs the country for less than what most dog walkers charge. They’ll be paid $15 to $20 an hour during the day and $11 to $13 at night, which is in line with the industry average.
If they work 50 hours a week, they’ll earn roughly $50,000 a year before taxes.
These nannies could shower each of Trudeau’s kids with Dom Perignon once a week and feed them 23k gold chocolate bacon on weekends while cruising in a brand-new Tesla Model 3, which, on top of their salaries, would only be a quarter of what it costs to fix all of Toronto’s potholes for one week.
Or to pay a single Member of Parliament for a year.
Again, we’re talking about two people with very important roles armed with a hypothetical Champagne and gold chocolate bacon allowance and a new car collectively earning what, oh, I don’t know, Lloyd Longfield makes to make sure Guelph’s voice is heard in Ottawa.
Perspective, people.
Now, this isn’t to suggest that we shouldn’t get upset over misappropriated public money, but it’s important to exercise some discern in directing our rage. There are literally 99 things our government wastes money on every year that areworth getting more fired up about than the modest expense of two nannies.
Given that this whole thing will probably cost taxpayers five cents over the course of Trudeau’s term, there has to be more to this than the fiscal side. Ah, yes, the hypocrisy.
People can’t seem to get over the fact that Trudeau said he didn’t require his child-care needs to be paid by the public – kind of – as part of his election campaign. What he was actually referring to specifically was the Universal Child Care Benefit, which has little to do with the fundamentals of child care.
So it’s minor a hypocrisy in the sense of literal expression, as well as in consideration of the low-expense, high-value employment of nannies.
Unless Trudeau sinks refugee boats and sends 30,000 ground troops to Syria next week, we’ll file this particular hypocrisy under ‘non-issue’.
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